adrift
by midnasass
Summary: After waking the Wind Fish, Link awakens on the remains of her storm-broken ship with nothing but the spray of the sea and a certain seagull at her side. Now she must survive the open ocean and return home to Hyrule, while she remembers her adventures on Koholint and tries to understand what happened to her friend Marin. A partial novelisation and epilogue to Link's Awakening.


_Notes:_ This takes place after the true ending of _Link's Awakening._ For those who have not played the game, spoilers ahead. In the game, Link sails the seas when the ship is caught in a terrible storm. Link washes ashore on Koholint Island, where Link is found by a kind girl of Mabe Village, Marin, who dreams of leaving the island and seeing the world. Link learns that, to leave the island, the Wind Fish who sleeps in an egg atop a mountain must be awakened. Along the journey to gather the eight instruments required to wake the Wind Fish, Link is aided by a mysterious owl who later reveals themself to be the spirit of the Wind Fish attempting to awaken. The eight Nightmares that guard the instruments of awakening slowly disclose to Link the truth of Koholint: the island is merely the dream of the Wind Fish, which has become invaded by Nightmares, and if the Wind Fish is awakened, then the island and everything on it will fade as a forgotten dream. Nonetheless, Link perseveres and, with the eight Instruments of the Sirens in hand, ascends the mountain to play the Ballad of the Wind Fish. Ever courageous, Link leaps into the abyss to brave the labyrinth of the Wind Fish's nightmares, and then the blades of the remaining Nightmares.

After defeating the final Nightmare, which takes the shape of Link's own various nightmares, including the shade of Agahnim, the sorcerer who sought to aid Ganon in the events of _A Link to the Past_ (note that _Link's Awakening_ is a sequel to _A Link to the Past_ here) and Ganon himself, the Wind Fish calls out to Link: "Let us awaken together!" Link wakes up on the remains of the ship adrift on the ocean, as if all of the events of _Link's Awakening_ were but a dream. A shadow suddenly blots out the sky. When the young hero looks up, Link sees the Wind Fish soaring overhead as proof that the exploits on Koholint were not merely all a dream. In the true ending of the game, obtained if the player has never died (or if the player used the A+B+START+SELECT glitch as so did many of us who have not become proficient at the game), Marin then soars overhead as a seagull.

As a small point of clarification, I am using the colorised DX version of the game as the 'canon' release, such that Marin appears as a seagull rather than a winged woman.

In true _Legend of Zelda_ fanwankery fashion and given that this Link is the same as Link as the one in _A Link to the Past_ as supported by the shadows taken by the Nightmare during the final fight of the game, I take that Link was on the journey home to Hyrule after visiting Holodrum, Subrosia, and Labrynna when the storm overtook our poor protagonist. Note that some aspects of _A Link to the Past_ have been changed and/or supplemented; for example, I've substituted some names for others and altered a few minor details for worldbuilding consistency, but that really isn't relevant to the fic at large. For instance, I've made use of some of the town names from _The Adventure of Link,_ as _A Link to the Past_ does not have villages or towns outside of good ol' Kakariko Village. In doing so, I've also substituted some of the events of _The Adventure of Link,_ but keep in mind that this Link is _not_ the same Link as the one in _The Adventure of Link._ Similarly, I've substituted the name of the bird from _The Minish Cap,_ Zeffa, for the unnamed duck from _A Link to the Past,_ and so on and so forth. Just note that if you see something that appears to be a mistake, it's probably not.

Regarding basic questions (such as "why is Link a girl?" or "why is Link mute?") please refer to the FAQ on my author page.

Amusingly enough, this fic is based in part on a recurring dream that I had as a youth. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy.

midna's ass. 31 May 2017.

A thanks to my darling beta reader Emma for (just now, on the morning of posting) at last reading through and helping me fix so many mistakes.

midna's ass. 27 August 2017.

* * *

She awakened to the taste of salt in her mouth and a painful crick in her neck, blinking the confusion from the corners of her eyes. Her face ached where it had pressed against the wooden bottom of what remained of the ship. Water buoyed the lower half of her body that hung limply over the side of the boat. She lifted her head up from the wood to touch her cheek. The warmth of her hand on her skin, as it had in so many dark caverns and damp crypts beneath the earth where the monsters lay hidden in shadow, reminded her that she still lived.

A smile parted her lips without her realising. And then her mouth drew into a thin line. The name of the ship would not spring to the tip of her tongue, though _Koholint Island_ came all too easily. Koholint, nowhere on the horizon or in the distance. Koholint, with the waves breaking over the softness of its beaches. The fog misting over the tranquil forests. The trees swaying in the sea breeze, the branches spreading in shade and sanctuary. The mountains peaking at the top of the very world. The rushing rivers spraying her with waters cooler and cleaner than any she had tasted. The rolling sands, the steppes rising with the wind, the villages and the people she had grown to know over her journey.

For all of the monsters, for all of the nightmares, the island underneath shone in its beauty.

The island...

All a dream, and nothing but. She had known. The world was too perfect, in a sense: eight carefully constructed dungeons, each with an item held deep within, and always the next location would come to her as if whispered in her sleeping ear.

The monsters that no longer existed in Hyrule; the moblin and octoroks she had not known since the restoration of the Seven Sages. The blade traps constructed and magicked by GANON's forces. Other beasties taken from the stories she had heard and the books she had read, that she had never seen in waking life: walking mushrooms, great red plants that lifted their heads from cylindrical pipes, moving cat-cacti that wiggled their triple bodies across the sand.

When GANON threatened Hyrule and locked away the descendants of the Seven Sages alongside their ancient artefacts, she had freed the maidens and retrieved the very implements once used against that thing of malice. She had been scarcely ten, then, when the fate of the world had become unwittingly thrust on her shoulders. She could barely hold the weight of sword and shield then, least not the Blade of Evil's Bane that would choose her as its master. Yet she had taken steps one after another and each one had led her down her path. To find her uncle; to follow his last request; to escort Her Majesty the Princess of Hyrule; to fulfil Her Majesty's wish; to find the elder of Kakariko; to take his advice and enter the Eastern Palace; to...

She had listened, and nodded, and taken up the weight again and again. She had known not what else to do. And then, when her numbed fingers had thrust the Blade of Evil's Bane that final time, she had not believed. She did not believe when GANON fell to smoke and ash. She did not believe when she forced the legs she could barely feel to carry her across the chamber of what had once been the Sacred Realm's crown. She did not believe when she heard the hum of the Golden Power, nor when she saw that gentle golden light that gleamed as no other light had ever gleamed. No, not gleamed. Shone, warmly, protectively. The light swaddled her with the promise of safety and peace.

When she rested her hand on the Triforce that beckoned her and wished, wished for all of GANON's evils to have been undone, the years washed away to a terrible dream left in the confines of the previous night. Only eight knew of all that had happened: the other descendants of the Seven Sages, the Princess of Hyrule, and herself. She returned the Blade of Evil's Bane to sleep, forever. She kept no trophies, no mementos.

Everything had occurred as it had occurred. But if she could, she would close her eyes and open them again, and the nightmare would fade, then be forgotten.

She had thought, over the travels undertaken to see the world by the behest of the Princess of Hyrule, that such dreams deserved to be forgotten. If she never again saw a monster she would weep with joy at the prospect.

She dreamed of her experiences sometimes, yes. She dreamed of the heart that she could feel thudding against her very throat and threatening to dredge up the bile she had desperately swallowed down. She dreamed of the blades and axes and spears that had flashed before her over and over, the scars that even now mapped out her suffering on her body. She dreamed of returning to Kakariko only for the neighbours she had loved all her life to turn against her, had dreamed of returning again only to find the villagers—those that remained—trapped within their own homes for fear of the possessed knights. She dreamed of failure. Of watching those she sought to rescue die again and again.

All these dreams: snippets of memories mixed with her own night terrors. A single image burned into her brain. Anxiety and fear condensing down until she awoke shivering with sweat and grasping for the thick parchment in her satchel. The letter from her uncle that reminded her that the nightmare had passed, the letter she had received in the Harbour Town of Mido on her last night in Hyrule before she set out for the lands across the sea, the letter that she had read enough times that the paper had grown soft.

These dreams she knew.

But never had she dreamed something as vast as Koholint. Never had she dreamed of people she had never known. Nor of monsters she had not seen, nor of implements she had not held, nor of places she had never stepped. And certainly not of an entire island nearly as large as Hyrule itself.

Koholint Island had faded like all of those other dreams. The sands had filtered through the crevices of her fingers; the water had passed through and the night had ended. The morning sun had crept halfway to its zenith, and the golden tinge of dawn had already left the gently lapping waves.

A dream...

Before Link's thoughts could coalesce and she could accept Koholint, the song welled up. From above, the melody poured down as a shower of spring rain to bathe her in the sound. The Ballad of the Wind Fish. Neither in Marin's voice nor in the ocarina she could not play that well, but in a low bellow that rang over the heavens. She raised her head up.

The Wind Fish.

A whale, massive enough to blot out the sun. Its flippers stretched out over the clouds, its tail cresting up with the crescendo of its song. Her mouth dropped open in awe. She yelled, and whooped, and called out to the Wind Fish that soared overhead.

Koholint. Koholint! Not a dream. Not a dream.

She watched the Wind Fish wheel above her. She waved to it as it passed. The Wind Fish sang out and did not pause. She drew herself up out of the sea to sit on the remains of the ship. Cupping her hands over her mouth she yelled as loudly as she could to the Wind Fish's song.

* * *

And now, when the Wind Fish's shadow passes from overhead and its song fades past the horizon, Link is left gazing at the vastness of the sea and sky that roll relentlessly onwards to the edge of her vision and melt into one. The dream fades where the nightmare takes root.

A few planks of floating wood, the bowled-out remains of a ship meant to carry her home, a sail spread over the surface of the water in rippling white like a thin layer of oil, a tarp tangled between two halves of a broken board.

Alone.

Adrift.

Nothing but the sea and the ringing in her ears.

The noisy caw of a seagull breaks her reverie. A gull must mean land nearby. And with land nearby she can live. She sets herself into motion before the bits of the boat float out of reach. She gathers what materials she can: the hollowed hull to serve as her base of operations; the tattered sail; the half-torn tarp; the remains of the supplies that she can fish out from the ocean. Meagre rations, not likely to last her more than week or two, but that will be enough, surely, to make land. Rope that floats and curls on the surface of the water, crusted enough with salt that she has to work to lace the remaining planks of wood to the sides of the broken hull into something resembling the raft with a scooped-out bowl of a centre. The raft is roughly the size of a square double bed with just enough room for her to stretch out fully, her head on the top end and her boots jutting off of the bottom.

The gull calls again. Link glances up to a sweep of white wings, then down to the bowl, to the gathered bits of jerky, dried fruits, and hard biscuits she has rescued from the sea. She gathers them up protectively in her arms. The gull flaps rapidly, erratically, and then without warning thuds headfirst onto the raft, on one of the planks tied to the sides. It lifts its head and squawks. Its wings shuffle beneath it. The gull seems to make an effort to stand but its limbs fail to cooperate. Wherever the bird may opt to fly in the future, it's unlikely for the gull to make it to land. On the other hand, a meal of fresh meat could do much to bolster her strength.

Link scoots herself backwards. Still keeping one arm encircled about her precious cargo, she feels about her belt. Nothing like a pocket knife. Her sword nowhere to be seen. The gull would rip all too easily through the bug catching net. Perhaps...

The tin of hard biscuits. She scoops it up with her left hand and observes the gull's motions. The bird doesn't seem to be injured, at least not where Link can tell. No visible wounds. No wings at awkward angles. No red amid the white, grey, and black of its plumage. No. No, there's red, at its talons. Her gaze drops down.

A flower.

A red flower clenched tightly in its right foot, the petals swayed by the wind that rolls over the waves. A red flower burned into Link's memory enough that her fingers loosen of their own accord and the tin jumbles to the ground.

The flower that grew on Koholint. The flower held on the ear of a girl. The flower...

Marin.

Link stares at the gull clutching the flower. She sits up. Her spine snaps as erect as the bones can go. Though her eyes water she scans the world about her as if seeking the last drop of water in the world.

Yet the horizon divulges no secrets. Only the endless blue that stretches on and on to the eternities of the ends of the world.

Marin. Marin's flower. It must have come from somewhere. From somewhere.

The gull's caw sounds from closer nearby. Link stares down at it. The bird has drawn near enough that it could snap the food from about Link's knees if it wanted. Instead the gull makes a strange motion with its foot pawing the air by its head. As Link continues to watch the gull—and closes her arm more fully about the provisions—the gull opens and closes its mouth repeatedly as though attempting to make noise. All that emanates from its beak are muffled squawks. The bird lowers its head and droops to the floor of the ship.

Link blinks twice in rapid succession. Could all this—the raft, the seagull, the ocean—be a dream of its own, she wonders, and when she awakens, she will again find herself in the bed in Marin and Tarin's house, where Marin will laugh at her for being a sleepyhead, and she will run her hands admiringly over the Instruments of the Sirens that Link has salvaged so far.

* * *

 _Some years ago,_ Marin said as a cheerful aside after the two had returned from a mushroom-digging expedition in the Mabe Woods in a brief reprieve from delving into dungeons, _I tried to explore Tail Cave myself, you know._ Without pausing for breath she continued, dusting the strings of the Full Moon Cello: _For something that's been kept in a grotto—or a cave, I suppose; mustn't mix words—it's awfully beautiful._

Link looked up from the heavy Conch Horn she was inspecting. Across the room Marin sat cross-legged on the bed with the Full Moon Cello between her thighs. The hand holding the rag Link had been using to clean the Conch Horn stilled. Though she lacked the curiosity that sent Marin to take to teaching herself how to play the eight, Link retained a motivation to keep the Instruments in tune. When Link had brought back the Conch Horn, Marin had taken it into her hands, as eager and excited as a child on Goddesstide evening. _The Conch Horn,_ she'd burst out before Link could even start to tell her of Bottle Grotto.

Presently Link turned the sentences over in her mind as she would a letter to see the remainder of the contents on the other side. A few days prior she had accepted the offer to collect the eggs from the cucco Tarin raised but had run into an unexpected difficulty: the cucco would attack her the moment she tried to reach beneath their nests. While she had sought to defend herself with her shield, Marin had observed the goings-on from the door of the henhouse to call out warnings. If Link bumped a cucoo by accident, Marin would admonish her for hurting the poor things. And then—then—just as Link had accidentally thrust out her shield out a moment too soon and knocked a cucco from its perch, she had faintly made out Marin whispering: _Do it. Do it mooore!_ When Link had glanced over her shoulder in confusion, Marin had raised a hand to her mouth and shaken her head. _Huh? No, no, it's nothing. I didn't mean it._

With the same incredulity arching her eyebrows Link looked up from the Conch Horn. She lay the horn in her lap—its great weight pressed down into her thighs—and lifted her hands to form the question she needed ask. _You tried to explore Tail Cave?_

 _Oh, hm? No, no, it's nothing at all, Link. Don't worry._ Marin grinned but the smile didn't seem to crinkle the corners of her eyes as it usually did, nor did she cover her mouth with her hand to laugh at her own private jokes as she tended to do. _Are you going to take the Instruments with you?_

Link tilted her head to one side.

 _When you leave, I mean,_ Marin added, her voice growing softer, _which you're going to do, aren't you?_

Link nodded. _Marin,_ she started, the word causing her to rest one wrist atop another and flex her fingers as though they were the soaring wings of a bird, _what will you do once I wake the Wind Fish?_

 _Oh, Link, listen to this!_ She took the Full Moon Cello's bow and ran the fine hairs over the rosin Tarin had procured. As she set the bow to the strings the cello itself seem to shimmer for a moment like a heat mirage. Then Link closed her eyes for a moment and the spell broke. The Ballad of the Wind Fish resonated the strings to fill the house with its melody. The first verse completed with a missed note here and a falter there. She drew in a breath as she started upon the second and when she sang Link forgot of the conversation.

* * *

The gull caws more quietly at her. Then more quietly. A strangled noise. Link draws in the provisions and manoeuvres herself to sit in front of them to free her hands. Salt crusts in the crevices of her palms. She dips her hands in the ocean waters to cleanse them, however slightly, before turning to the gull.

Her stomach rumbles. Some thin voice in the back of her head conjures up the image of roast fowl, which she dismisses as foul: if a single kind-hearted bee could become her companion for years toiling in GANON's shadow, then a gull could carry with it the very secrets of the world.

 _Who are you?_ she signs.

The gull moves its head in a pattern she cannot recognise. The sounds rasp from its throat again. Link's hand twitches. The gull flaps up with a motion so abrupt that her fingers close around the sword no longer at her hip. The bird rightens itself up on its free leg. Its right foot thrusts forward; its talons unclench. The flower drifts down to the deck.

The flower lies there on the wood.

Red, bright red, almost richer and more vibrant than the waking world yet shimmering like a heat mirage, or like the blurred edges of a dream. If she touches it the petals could melt away, the stem disintegrating to dust.

The gull steps forward to wobble in front of the flower. It bows its head, or perhaps simply lowers it into the shade of Link's shadow.

The bird nudges the stem with its beak.

Link exhales. The breath runs over dry lips. Dry already. Of course. She's been asleep for Goddesses know how long. A canteen of fresh water—she assumes it still fresh—waits with the other foodstuffs behind her, but that water alone may not last very long.

A sudden warmth on her hand snaps her arm back prior to her slow realisation of the gull having rested its head against her wrist. She clenches her fingers, nods to herself, and reaches. The tip of her left index nail brushes against the flower first. Somehow at that very instant the colours faintly fade, as of a watercolour portrait looked upon again years after its painting. But the flower remains.

She lifts the fragile thing to cup it in her palms. Though the flower could not pass through her fingers she holds them tightly together nonetheless. She inhales.

The scent. The scent she has passed by a thousand times. The scent that awakened her and the scent by which she has lulled herself back to sleep. The spray of the sea, the salted wind, the lullaby of the waves over Toronbo Shores. The cliffside that overlooked the sea.

* * *

 _This is my first walk with you, Link._ She laughed and swept her arms out to the horizon. Her voice deepened if just for a moment, so quick that Link must have misheard: _I've never shown anyone else this place._ For in the next second her words sprang clear and high as a spring rainshower. _Oh! And what a wonderful view it is!_

 _Here?_ Link asked when Marin turned back towards her.

 _I like to watch the sea, and the sky. Maybe someday, I'd like to think, a ship will come. That's how I found you, Link, when you washed ashore._ Her eyes glimmered in the afternoon light. No, not in the light. They glistened wetly and perhaps Marin knew, for she looked out back to the sea. _I know it's silly. The island's surrounded by water. What am I doing, coming out here to look? But it's so beautiful. The way the waves light up gold in the sun, and how they carry foam white as the clouds, and how it reflects the sky back up until you can barely tell what's up and what's down, and just how_ much _of it there is. A whole world! A whole world out there. Look how far it stretches, and in every direction could be a brand new island, a whole 'nother Koholint, and so many beyond. Someday I'd like to see them all. Someday I'd like to sing for everyone I can, for the entire world, at all the corners of the Earth._ She raised her hand to her mouth to giggle at herself. _I guess I really_ do _sound silly, don't I?_

 _I don't think it's silly at all._

Marin's smile widened enough to reach her eyes, which had brightened to threaten to replace the very sun. _You're too kind, Link._ She tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear and the breeze that whispered out from the sea she loved so carried with it a soft fragrance that Link had never smelled before.

Link felt heat rise up her neck. The afternoon must have warmed up without her noticing.

 _Where's the flower from?_ she asked to distract herself from the fact that the bones of her legs have suddenly transformed into chuchu. _They don't grow in Hyrule, and I haven't seen it on my travels, either._

She twisted a lock over her finger as her features softened. _They grow down on the shore sometimes. I call them sunset lilies, because that's what they remind me of. Watching the sunset by the sea. When I was little,_ Marin explained, her tone taking on a tune that strengthened as she went on, _and my father and I came ashore, I saw the flowers where the skies met the seas. I could not sleep without the lull of the waves and the song of the ocean breeze. But the flowers, like seashells that sing of their home, carry their own melody. And so I saw them and so fell in love with the ocean, the island, and me._ She hummed a _da na na._ Link applauded and Marin blushed. _Th-that wasn't anything! I was just making it up as I went along._

Link's jaw dropped. _You made that up!?_

 _You're too kind, Link._ Marin brought her hand up to her mouth but Link could still spot the grin she sported. _I don't know that much about music, but I know what can sound good. When you learn to play those instruments better, you could accompany me._ Her blush seemed to deepen and she looked down and away. _If you wanted._

Link inhaled. The flower's fragrance. No, not just that. Marin's fragrance. Marin. _Marin, when I collect the Instruments of the Sirens, I think I'd like to...Marin?_

But Marin's gaze had returned to fix on the horizon. The cliff fell away beneath them to merge with the seas. Gulls called overhead, wheeling white shadows passing beneath the sun. The light reflecting from the waves bore a brilliance almost too much, and Link glanced away from where Marin looked to the girl herself. The dress bluer even than the waters of the ocean. The violet ribbon that straddled her hips to indicate the direction of the wind. The brown hair that glowed orange in the approaching afternoon dipping to evening.

Link's hand closed into a fist that she held at her side. Her fingers would form the words she needed. They would _have_ to. Before she finished her collection, before she awakened the Wind Fish and could return, at last, to her home, she would have to ask.

* * *

Despite the memories of Koholint that have begun already to merge in the shadows of her dreams, the name burns not only in her vision but in her fingers. _Marin._

With hands like a bird in flight.

The gull's wings burst into motion, a whirlwind of grey and white that startles Link to tip her backwards and nearly flatten the provisions. When she catches herself she raises herself to stare at the bird, who struts along the boat and caws at her. In a rhythm. Though the melody does not carry she has heard the song enough to know the beat.

Link licks her lips. She hunts through her pockets and what remains of her belts. Few of her possessions remain, but lodged in her satchel she finds the old blue ocarina she has carried with her for eight years. On Koholint the ocarina had come to her in a dream—a dream within a dream, or perhaps, if reality reflects dreams and dreams reflect reality, then that double reflection _was_ reality—perfect, the blue as glossy as the day she had dug it up from beneath the flowers. Now only the faintest streaks of blue remain on the wood, smoothed by time and her fingers. Salt covers the surface. Link wets the mouthpiece. The salt stings her tongue. She dredges up one of the water-skins she found floating along beside the wreckage of the boat and drinks half a mouthful, nothing more.

Immediately as she swallows she frowns to herself. Link regards the water-skin in her palm. Already it has lightened, emptied, from the droplets that moistened her mouth.

She sets the water-skin back.

 _Bird._ The gull caws loudly and raises its wings in a gesture so decidedly human that Link feels tears prick at the corners of her eyes. Then it tips over and falls. This time Link observes carefully: the shuffle of legs and wings resembles less the sudden motions of a bird and more a human attempting to raise herself up on her hands and knees before the gull manages to right itself.

In her time she has seen stranger. She has seen a boy turn into a tree. She has seen a tortoise the size of a mountain obediently open its mouth to the power of an earthquake. She has seen another world shrouded in malice transform to gold and purity at the barest whisper of her own wish. She has been a rabbit hopping about with her blade clenched desperately between her teeth to avoid losing it.

If Marin has become a bird—if the Wind Fish heeded her wish in a matter most literal—then she has only gratitude in her bones.

And if not. If the bird...she will burn those bridges when she crosses them and not a moment before.

She finds the shapes and symbols that manifest the sentiments welling up within her chest. _Is that you, Marin?_

The bird nods, and the tears trace salt down her cheeks as her trembling fingers touch feather.

* * *

 _I've looked for my entire life, but I've never seen a ship,_ Marin murmured, her voice so low that Link had to strain to hear. _Only those who wash ashore._

 _There are others?_

Marin nodded. She tapped the sides of the Farore's boots that Link had brought with her, towing her regular boots under her arm, alongside the Sea Lily's Bell with its chime that brought with it the dawn over the ocean. The two sat on the porch to Marin and Tarin's house—though Marin would brandish her fist on her hip to announce that the house was Link's now, too, whether she liked it or not—as she had pestered Link to regale her with the story of Key Cavern. Link had told her of the dangers of the dungeon bit by bit. Marin had pouted and asked her: _Why don't you ever want to talk about it?_

Link had rubbed the back of her head and smiled sheepishly at her. _I don't think of it as heroic. I do what I need to do, and that's...that's all. I want just to go home and rest. To see my friends and family. To sit back and chow down on dinner. To think about never setting foot on a ship again if I can help it!_

Marin had laughed and poked Link in the side. _And you can break all the pots in your own house whenever you want._ Then her voice had faded down, and she'd whispered: _I've looked for my entire life..._

Now she glanced up at Link, and nodded again. _A lot of people here get washed up. You've noticed there aren't that many people on Koholint, right?_ Link's turn to bob her head in agreement; even in the nadir of GANON's rule over Hyrule, the villages had brimmed with people clinging to whatever life they could: Saria on the river, and Darunia on the mountain, and Ruto, and New Kasuto, and Rauru, and Mido on the shores, and Nabooru, and of course her home town of Kakariko. Though she had travelled the world over, from Hyrule to Labrynna, from Holodrum to Kolohint, and there would be no kingdom like Hyrule and no home like Kakariko. _But here, there aren't that many. There's Mabe, and the Animal Village, but that's all. Just a few handfuls eking out a living._ She paused, and the corners of her mouth lifted up. _Not that it's bad here. I love this island, and everyone on it. It's my home, and it's taught me so many songs on the voice of the wind. But...I can't remember the last time someone was born, or that someone got married. People get washed up, and when they come they're full of stories of who they were and what they were doing when they came, but the longer they stay the quieter they get about it all._ Her words quickened. _And if someone asks they turn away or laugh it off or say it doesn't matter. And then the ones who try to leave, and then they're too afraid to do it, or they go to one of the dungeons and they don't—_

Farore's boots clattered against the ground. Marin's hands spasmed and she wrapped them around herself. Link started to ask what was wrong but with Marin's eyes squeezed shut instead she looped her arms around Marin to hold her tight.

 _I'm fine, I'm fine. Don't you worry about me,_ Marin mumbled, putting on her usual smile, and then the storm passed as quickly as it had come, and the girl was sea spray and sunlight wrapped into one. _So there have been other people to wash up. But no one like you, Link. You know that, right?_ Link found herself wrapped up in an embrace even more tight than the one she had just offered Marin. _You're special,_ Marin whispered, her breath so warm on Link's ear that the heat flushed her face as well, _and you're my friend. Don't doubt that, and don't forget that. And don't forget me, either._

That one question. The one question she needed to ask. A single thing so simple yet she could not find it within her to sculpt her feelings with her hands. _I won't forget you,_ she promised, her hand on Marin's back, whether Marin could understand her or not.

She wouldn't forget, for she wouldn't leave the island alone.

* * *

 _Marin, Marin, Marin._ She repeats the word until her hands tire and then some. Marin leaps up and down on the deck. When Link stretches out her arms, Marin attempts to climb up her lap to nestle into them. She holds Marin like a fragile pot that Marin herself would berate her for breaking.

Warm. Surprisingly light. Scarcely any weight at all for something so large: she expects something like a small bow-wow. When Marin curves her neck to rest her head under Link's chin, she blinks away the wetness gathering at her eyes.

She strokes Marin's back. Marin caws quietly and Link hears it as a coo, or a whisper, or any number of sounds the girl with the flower in her hair can no longer make.

Pinching the flower between her fingers, Link struggles to find purchase on the side of Marin's feathered head. Marin's wings slope down, and the glimmer in her dark eyes fades. Link touches her fingers to her chin. Then she turns the stem of the flower in on itself and ties the end into a tiny circlet that she sets atop Marin's head, rotating the makeshift crown until the flower rests against her left as it did in the dreaming world.

Marin rubs her beak against Link's palm. While Link regards her open hand Marin hops to the edge of the boat and peers over the edge. She turns her head this way and that.

Link can picture the reflection Marin faces in the water. A girl who has become a bird.

She gives Marin all the time she needs. In the meantime Link continues to set up the raft for the time being. She spreads the tarp up over her; if she detaches two of the planks of wood and arranges them just so, the tarp can cover something like half the ship. She can curl up under it to cover almost all of her body for shade.

And the sail. Once she figures out the direction of land, whether that be Hyrule or elsewhere, she'll see if she can catch the wind. Or a plank might serve as an oar.

This time, when she arrives on land, she will not impatiently take to the sea herself. She'll wait for the next merchant's vessel bound for Hyrule and board.

Marin squawks again just as Link has finished cataloguing the provisions. She flaps noisily. Link replaces the small box of dried fruits on the deck and looks over at her companion. _You can understand me when I sign, even though you're a gull now. Can you nod?_ Marin bobs her head fervently. _Shake your head?_ Now back and forth. Marin wobbles slightly and Link finds herself unable to keep from laughing, a laughter that only bubbles up more loudly when Marin stamps one foot on the deck. _But I don't have a way to understand you. Maybe if we had some paper and a pen, you could write. Or maybe there's a way to turn you human again._ At this Marin nods so fiercely that her beak lodges into the deck.

Link's stomach hurts from laughing as she helps Marin free herself. She opens the tin of biscuits and offers one to her friend, who snatches it out of her hand. Throwing her head back, Marin gobbles it up, then opens and closes her beak a few times. It takes Link a moment to recognise the gesture akin to the smacking and licking of lips after having eaten something delicious.

She's not alone.

 _Marin, can you do me a favour?_ Marin dips her head. _You can fly now!_ She pushes out her chest and preens herself, strutting back and forth. _Could you fly up and tell me what direction the nearest land is? Once we get somewhere, we can go home. To my home, at least, and we can figure out a way to change you back._ Without another noise Marin spreads her wings. Actually managing to fly up takes her a moment or two. Link watches her wheel through the sky in increasingly large spirals, farther and farther away.

She waits. What of the others on the island? Of Marin's own father? Is he yet flying somewhere out there as a seagull too? Was he her father before they washed up on Koholint, or was that a product of the weaving of dreams? The answers do not come readily. If Marin knows them—and she hopes that Marin does, for her own sake—then she has no method of informing Link until they come ashore, until they can get paper or until they can devise a plan to regain Marin's human form.

Link has no timepiece by which to measure its passing, but around when she starts to worry, an abrupt heavy weight on her head nearly shocks her off the boat. Marin slides off of her. The flower remains in its place, though a tad crooked, and Link reaches over to straighten it. She notes then how Marin breathes heavily, or so it seems; Link has not enough experience with birds to say one way or another. Link moves to grab the water-skin but her companion shakes her head. Marin drags herself to the side of the boat and lowers her head to the water. Seawater. Link intakes a sharp breath. When Marin finishes drinking and returns to looking at Link her hands burst into motion.

 _You can't drink seawater. I know that! It's better to not drink at all than to drink seawater, because of all the salt._ Marin shakes her head even more furiously than before. Link blinks. _What? Can seagulls drink saltwater?_ Marin inclines her head and Link stares at her. But instead of squawking out a laugh or preening as before, Marin merely takes a step towards her and then sits, tucking her legs beneath her.

 _What's wrong?_ Link asks, and Marin gives her a pointed glance with dark, beady eyes, then opens and closes her mouth repeatedly until Link covers her face with her palm. _I keep thinking you'll start singing the Ballad of the Wind Fish again. Are you okay? Do you want something to eat?_

Marin raises herself up on one leg to pound her other foot down. Link rubs the back of her head. _I don't understand._ She extends her wings and gives them a brief flap. _Is one of your wings injured?_ Marin's head swings side to side like a pendulum. _Are you hurt anywhere?_ Swinging. _Are you trying to tell me something?_ A bob of the head, now. Link snaps her fingers and her face heats in embarrassment. _Did you figure out where the land is?_ Marin doesn't respond, at least not that Link can tell. _Which way is it!? That way? This way?_

No matter which direction she points, Marin's head returns to its pendulum swing, slow and deliberate.

Link buries her face in her palms before trying again. _I'm sorry, Marin. I don't mean to be frustrated at you._ She bites her lower lip. The sun's descent reddens the sky before her. In Hyrule the sun would disappear behind the mountains, or be swallowed up by the forests, or be lost in the winds swirling across the desert sands.

Now she can see the perfect circle drowning into the sea. For a moment the sun is half a dome, as of a half-hidden divining sphere, and then the golden light sinks entirely.

 _You_ did _find land, didn't you? You were gone for an awfully long time._

Marin does not move. And then in the next second she does. A steady movement from left to right and back again.

Link closes her eyes, opens them again. _There's no land nearby?_

Marin dips her head to the deck.

Her mouth thins into a line. _There's no land,_ Link repeats, and Marin nods again. _No land at all._ The horizon stretches out where the sky and sea blend together. Instead of the infinities it yielded as she and Marin gazed out to it on Koholint, invisible hands have taken that never-ending stretch of possibility and looped it into a noose small enough to choke her.

But hands much more visible than those of fate have tried to choke her. Her throat remained ringed with the violet-green imprints of GANON's fingers for months into the peace of Hyrule. To lie down upon the deck and give herself to the elements would be to forego her self, and all that she is cries out to live.

And so she will fight to live until the moment her spark exhausts, and not a second until then.

* * *

Carrying an entire harp down the Tal Tal Mountains had weakened her to the point of sharp pinpricks of pain marching down her arms. She could picture the bruises that would snake there in a few hours. When she spotted a cave she dragged the Surf Harp inside to take a brief respite out of the sun and catch her breath.

The cave dropped away into a massive pond so like the one in which she had just risked her life that her mind reeled her backwards. But the sunfish waiting within called out to her for the ocarina that hung from her belt. _Manbo,_ he called himself, and he had a song for her. A mambo.

 _I've been on this island long 'nough,_ he burbled up from the water, _and I_ know _things. Ya've seen the Gateways, haven't ya?_

 _The Gateways?_ she repeated, but evidently he knew not sign language, at least not Hyrulean, and so she shook her head.

 _The Gateways? Those points that'll take ya from place to place in a flash? There's one right near here._

Now she nodded.

 _Right-o, those little buggers. See, there's all sorts of memories that connect here on the island. And if ya can tap into those memories you can fix yaself a connection. So, when I was a littler fish than the big ol' guy I am now, I went and taught the Wind Fish the memory of this song and tied it to my old pond. But then I got too big for it. Went t' sleep one night and woke up here, 'cause that's the Nightmares for ya. Got a bit too nosy, ya could say. And now I'm stuck 'ere. So's what's a guy to do? Well, ya're gonna wake the Wind Fish, aren't ya?_

Link blinked and tilted her head to one side.

 _How'd I know, ya wanna ask? 'Cause I'm the smartest guy 'round here._ Manbo burst out a chortle. _Nah, just 'cause my sons here've been watchin' ya lug that giant harp 'round like a right bozo. Ya're never gonna get that up the mountainside. Play the song 'n' ya'll do yaself right fine. And if ya wake the Wind Fish, I reckon things'll get better, one way or 'nother._

The questions burn on the tips of her fingers. Of what Manbo meant by the memories of the Wind Fish. Of what had befallen him, and of what he knew about the Nightmares. Of how Manbo had taught the Wind Fish the song when by all right he had no hands with which to hold an instrument. She'd wondered at what Manbo called the Gateways since the first one flung her into the air and deposited her back where she was, and since she had foolhardily leaped into the second one only to find herself near Mabe again. The memories of the Wind Fish.

What did that mean, for the island to be connected to the memories?

Instead she bowed to Manbo as her way of thanks. The sunfish and his sons waved back. Hefting the Surf Harp as it glittered through every colour in the rainbow and then some she carried the burden and its weight outside, where she took up the ocarina that resembled in every way the one given to her by the boy on the stump.

She wet the mouthpiece. The rhythm and melody of Manbo's mambo stuck with her, and then—abruptly—wetness around her. Gasping, she found herself waist-deep in the water of the so-called medicinal pond outside of Tracy's house. Opening her mouth in shock she flung her head this way and that and—the Surf Harp had come along for the ride.

At least the road through the Mabe Woods proved mercifully short. Each dungeon dive took her further away from Marin's house, and on each journey the instruments felt impossibly heavy, imbued with such a weight that she wondered if the things were made of solid lead.

Marin opened the door for her when she knocked. _Link! Link, Link, you're back and safe and oh I just made supper do you want some and tell me all about where you were. Is that the Surf Harp!?_

Placing the Surf Harp beside the three Instruments of the Sirens already collected, Link landed heavily down on the bed and lay on her side. The pillow cushioned her head. The scent of Marin on the sheets did little to help her already exercise-heated body. Marin peppered her with questions as liberally as she had peppered the cucco stew she now presented to Link. She had not the time to grab a spoon: Link grabbed the bowl with both hands and tipped it down her mouth like a girl possessed. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve, leaned back, exhaled.

She skimmed over the adventures in the dungeon. Marin sat on the edge of the bed beside her, wide-eyed, acting out what she called heroic and Link called what must be done. She elaborated on the view from Tal Tal, on the beauty of Angler Tunnel, on Nayru's flippers crafted by the zora she had retrieved from the base.

 _Zora?_ Marin repeated, puzzled. _Nayru?_

Not zora. Regular flippers. Though—what kind of Hyrulean, or Labrynnan, or Holodrese, had never heard of the zora, or of the Goddess Nayru in All Her Wisdom? Link pushed the thought from her mind: _And listen to this!_ Producing the ocarina, Link went over the notes once with her fingers on the empty holes, and then again blowing through to sound the mambo. Marin clapped her hands in delight.

 _You're getting so much better at it!_ she cried out. _I didn't know that you had a hand for making your own music!_

Link laughed. _Not quite._ As she started in on the meeting with Manbo and his mambo—a tale that Marin would love—she gestured wildly with her hands to show his sheer size, relishing the broad smile on Marin's lips. And then she explained the mambo.

At once Marin's mouth thinned into a line; the glitter left with her eyes with such speed that Link's fingers turned to stone.

When Marin beamed again a second later Link could make out the glistening wetness of barely-contained tears gathering at the edges of her eyes.

 _I'm glad that you're learning other songs, Link. It's good for you to branch out. There's only so much I can teach you._

Link flapped one wrist over the other. _Marin? Are you okay?_

 _I'm not jealous, I promise._ Marin bit her lower lip, and if not for her distress Link would have blushed from the sweet embarrassment of her expression.

 _I didn't say you were._ Link offered her a smile of encouragement but Marin simply wrung her hands. _Please, tell me what's wrong._

The edges of her voice had started to crack. _I wanted to be useful, is all I meant. Since I can't gather the Instruments, I thought I could at least be...you know...with the songs..._

 _Do...do you not want me to learn songs from other people?_ Link left the ocarina on the bed next to her chest as she looked up at Marin, and Marin looked at her with her eyebrows slanted downwards and the violet bags under her eyes more vivid than ever before. _I won't if you don't want me to._

 _No! No. No...sorry for yelling._ Marin looked down. _I don't want to interfere. You should...you should gather as many songs as you can. Especially since they can actually help you, while all the songs I've taught you are just...songs._

Having fallen off the other side of the bed from alarm, Link clambered back on. The mattress bounced under her knees as she shuffled forward. She clapped her hands onto Marin's shoulders. When Marin's gaze met hers, Link pulled her into a tight hug.

She stayed that way for long enough that she could smell nothing but the seaflower in Marin's hair.

Then she let go. They kneeled facing one another on the bed. So close that Marin's exhalations warmed Link's nose. Marin rested her hands on her knees, Link's in the air before her, taking whatever forms they needed to for Link's feelings to reach the girl a single centimetre and an entire ocean away from her. _Marin. Your songs are the most important to me. Please believe me. I only learned the song from Manbo because I wanted to share it with_ you _and not a single other thought could've crossed my mind. There's—there's a song I want to teach you, that was taught to me by a boy when I was young._

 _A boy?_ Marin's brow knit together. _You have a boy back home?_

Link drew her own eyebrows together for a moment of confusion before the implications of Marin's envy dawned on her. She shook her head with such force that the cap was knocked off and Marin covered her mouth to giggle. Link told her, briefly, of the boy on the stump, of the ocarina she found under the flowers, of his request to hear the song one last time.

 _And then what happened to him?_

Link merely raised the ocarina to her lips and blew. Almost instinctively she stretched out a hand to the sky to catch the blue-white loftwing the boy had told her of. Zeffa. Did Zeffa still wait for her in Hyrule?

As Link began to repeat the melody Marin inhaled, and sang alongside her. She lowered the ocarina to her lap. The tears that had dried from Marin's eyes now stung the corners of Link's, and she buried her face in the pillow.

Link let her be the rest of the evening. While she prepared for sleep with the mysterious calls of the _bay—your road goes into the bay_ she had heard resonating from within the Surf Harp still circulating through her mind, she spotted Marin looking at the Instruments of the Sirens. Link took a place by Marin's side.

 _Half of them already,_ Marin noted with a certain tone that Link couldn't quite identify, and Link couldn't help but grin in reply. The same thought that buoyed her on the way to Marin's house.

 _Halfway done. Then I can be on my way home. And, Marin, you know..._ Link closed her eyes, forced the question out of her hands. _Youcancomewithmeifyouwant._

Silence.

The silence that deadened her heart. She raised her eyelids only to find Marin looking away.

 _Marin?_

Gazing away at the Instruments of the Sirens.

Link coughed and Marin brushed her face with her sleeve prior to turning back, a smile now parting her lips. _Oh, Link, I didn't see you there! What's wrong? Why are you covering your face like that?_

Another time. The question, someday, but another time.

* * *

They rig the remains of the sail up as best they can. If they travel in a straight line they will have to find land somewhere, eventually. Link carves out a space for the plank in the bottom of the boat. They pry out some of the nails in the useless planks lashed to the side of the bowl and, while Marin holds the tip of her cap out of her eyes, Link endeavours to fix the pieces into something resembling a working sail rig.

It doesn't hold well, tilting and wobbling. Eventually Link finds a solution: If she leans on it or holds it just so, the wind will push the boat along. And if the wind blows _too_ strongly, she has no recourse but to set the sail down for fear of it being dragged away from the ship entirely.

West, Link decides, in the direction of Hyrule. She tracks the direction on the motions of the sun in the day and Anouki, the fixed star, in the night.

When the wind blows in an apt direction she holds up the post. When not, she hides in the shade of the tarp alongside Marin. She sleeps if the wind blows the other way or when she tires. The first time she needs to urinate she tries to do so when Marin sleeps. Marin wakes anyway and Link nearly falls off the side of the raft in her embarrassment and shock.

Occasionally Marin practises her skills at flight. She discovers the fish that gather under the raft. Link checks her bug-catching net over. Though she's carried it with her for years, her life matters more than the net. _If it rips,_ she tells Marin as she settles herself down on the edge of the boat and attempts to teach herself how to catch fish, _I'll have it fixed when we come back to my home._

Every time Link fails—the fish swim away, or she misses, or she can't lift the net up from the water quickly enough—she hastens to try again. If she stills the boat as best she can and sprinkles dried meat onto the surface of the water, the fish sometimes emerge from the underside of the raft to nibble. Then she swoops in with the net.

Fish. Wriggling, gills flaring, each one about the length of her thumb.

She knows enough not to eat the meat without water. Instead she asks Marin to slit open the fish if she can so that she could, theoretically, collect the blood in one of the empty water-skins. The stench of dying fish churns her stomach. When she offers the fish to Marin, Marin shakes her head and flees to sit at the top of the sail. Though Link has hunted before, she has never eaten meat raw, and certainly not fish with the scent of the sea; Marin, moreover, could not hurt even an octorok.

Link returns the fish to the waters.

Another time.

Marin tries her hand, or rather her wing, at catching the fish as well. She flies clumsily. After a headfirst leap knocks the flower crown from her head she takes it to leaving it on the ship while she practises. The third day adrift finds her finally snagging one to bring to the deck. Link applauds her wildly, and as Marin puffs out her chest in pride, the fish darts away.

Link laughs at that. Marin caws huffily. The second fish she catches, Link observes her try to bring her beak close. She coughs up bile instead. The fish drops back into the sea.

She comforts Marin with an embrace. _It'll be over soon. We won't have to eat raw fish. I wonder if we could start a fire._ Marin ogles her, and Link smiles sheepishly. _I know it's not a great idea,_ she signs awkwardly around Marin's bulk occupying most of the space in her arms, _but if it comes down to it, we'll have to try._

Marin drinks saltwater. Some part of Link suspects that she would rather take it fresh. Yet the water-skins empty with frightening speed. The first day she ignores her thirst entirely. By the end of the second her mouth tastes of mud. By the third, sand.

At least talking to Marin requires no breath.

The water runs out on the fifth day. She cuts open the water-skin to lick the last few drops from the interior. Involuntarily Link runs her tongue over her lips, cracked yet not bleeding. Marin nudges her hand with her head, and Link absentmindedly strokes her neck. The petals of the flower have dried, and one flakes off. She stares at the shrivelled brown thing lying on the deck.

She lowers her eyelids.

* * *

At least the Surf Harp had been of an apt size to carry: the Wind Marimba stretched across both arms when she hefted it up from the pedestal at the heart of Catfish's Maw.

Once more in the water she struggled to pull out her ocarina without dropping the Wind Marimba beneath the bay surface or drowning, a feat proving more difficult than anticipated. While the waves of Martha's Bay slapped into her mouth she fought her way back to the mouth of the stone statue that waited for her. Stone, or perhaps not. The scales glittered, the eyes shone wetly, and sometimes out of the corner of her vision she could—possibly—see the pupil darting about.

She slid the Wind Marimba past the teeth of the Catfish's lower jaw. The sharp rock scratched at her bare lower legs as she hauled herself up. The ocarina.

Marin had not forbidden her to use Manbo's mambo, or any other songs she might learn along the path. Yet, if not for fear of the bay water damaging the Wind Marimba, the ocarina would have remained tucked safely away at her belt.

Link rested a hand on the surface of the Wind Marimba to tie them together, as Manbo had taught her. Then she played the instrument.

Not an Instrument of the Sirens, but _hers._

When her vision straightened she remained in the entrance of Catfish's Maw, though now moved to be directly in front of the door, the Wind Marimba similarly shifted. A few more tries.

Within the dungeon the mambo could only link the memory to the very lip. And outside the dungeon, she had no place to play.

Link allowed herself a few moments of rest. She drained the remainder of the water from the water-skin she had taken into the dungeon. She revived herself on the slightly soggy food she had brought with her. Marin had packed soup tightly into one of Link's bottle and had sealed it with clay. Somehow the bottle still rested in her satchel, unbroken. She broke the seal with a sharp whack of the sword.

Cucco stew. A rich gold in colour, the scents of Koholint herbs and honey drifting up from the bottle. Link tipped her head back to drink deeply. With her belly full of warmth from the soup and her heart from the image of Marin cooking the soup just for her, Link raised herself up from the damp floor, lifted the Wind Marimba up with the heaviness digging ridges into her arms, and lowered herself to the water.

The trek through cold water chased the heat out of her. She devised a method to slip the Wind Marimba up on top of a rock, then dived down through the underwater passageway. Monsters nipped at her heels but she ignored them. When she surfaced she noted the Wind Marimba still on the rock and sighed, relieved.

The Wind Marimba began to slide off of the slick rock. Towards her. She caught it and the weight nearly plunged her underwater.

Such luck.

She became the repetitive motions of her legs paddling her along, the Wind Marimba bobbing just above the water, the steady ache that settled in her bones like an old friend come to visit. Without monsters to sharpen her senses she set her mind adrift.

The slime eel's words.

It had clicked its long tongue against the hard carapace of its jaw as the last of its strength drained from its immobile form. _You don't ssseem to know what kind of island thisss iss..._ It had rasped out a laugh. _What a fool!_ As with the other monsters that relied upon heart vessels to remain alive until the final blow, its body—beating with the vessels whose magic had been exhausted—burned itself out to smoke and ash. Its last laugh faded to dust and silence.

What kind of island this was.

The people washed up. The memories of the Wind Fish. The songs and the Gateways that could send her from one place to another just like that.

She swam on.

The quickest path lay through Toronbo Shores, if she could leap across the gap with the roc's feather lightening her weight to almost nothing and Farore's boots pushing the wind at her back. But the Wind Marimba could fall. She had slipped in those longer gaps before. Instead she took the long way around through the Mabe Woods, retracing her steps through the Koholint graveyard.

Her strength gave out halfway through the Mabe Woods. With moblin and octoroks crawling about she took refuge in the witch's home, dragging the Wind Marimba behind her on all fours.

Not Syrup, the hedgewitch she knew well, but someone eerily similar. This witch said nothing of the Wind Marimba, did not even spare the Instrument a glance, and simply offered Link a rest on her bed.

Link declined to sleep but lay quietly on the mattress. _I'll come back to repay you,_ she promised, _once I have my strength back._

The witch cackled. _Your company is enough payment, little girl._

Still Link, knowing the witch had no need of rupees, went out in the evening to gather ingredients for her brews. The mild exercise flowed blood to her limbs. When she returned with armfuls and bottlefuls of mushrooms, herbs, insects, and samples of other animals the witch filled up her nearly-empty pouch with sparkling powder.

 _And if you see my husband, by chance,_ the witch remarked as Link gathered her materials into the satchel, _tell him to stop being a batty fool and come home. Just because I can't recall how to be a bat!_

Link finished the trek. Her arms burned yet for lack of rest, but at least she did not need crawl on hands and knees.

The moon overheard had started to fall when Marin met her at the entrance to the village, pushing aside the long grass used to keep the children from entering the increasingly dangerous forest to let Link in.

 _You looked like you ran around the entire island three times! Is everything okay, Link? What's that marimba? Oh, is that...is that an Instrument of the Sirens?_ For a moment she seemed perplexed, her tongue poking slightly out of her mouth, her eyes narrowed as if trying to recall something forgotten. Then she shrugged. _What's it called?_

Link attempted to gesture with the Wind Marimba still in her grip. Marin tsked her tongue at herself and took it from Link's arms despite Link weakly trying to keep it. _Let me carry this,_ she said with such firmness that Link nodded meekly. Marina cradled it carefully, but she didn't seem to strain and walked normally, her back straight, her dress swaying from contact with the tall grass. Link stared at her receding back. _You coming?_

She fell into step beside Marin. _Isn't it heavy?_

 _The marimba?_ Link watched her gaze flicker between the harp and Link's own bedraggled tunic. _No...? It feels normal. Why? I mean, maybe the Instruments are lighter than normal ones. I don't know. I asked my father about them and he said that they're light as a feather for him! Maybe he's just that strong._

Link's knees wobbled and she feared they would give out again. Marin stopped to look back at her.

 _Are they heavy for you?_ she whispered, her voice suddenly very small.

 _Heavier than anything I've ever carried. Even Din's bracelet doesn't help me. I don't know how, or why._

Marin stared at the Wind Marimba in her arms as though she had discovered a corpse. Link could barely make out her whisper: _Heavy with memory._

 _Heavy with...memory?_ Link repeated, though Marin didn't look at her.

 _I thought it was because I was older, and stronger, that I could hold them like this now. And my father...light as a feather..._ Not even the stars could bring out back the light gone from her irises. _Memory is cruel, isn't it? Because I don't even remember what I've forgotten. I don't remember what I've..._

The Wind Marimba slipped from her grip. Link lunged herself to the ground; her chin bumped against rock and pain skewered through the inside of her mouth as she bit through her cheeks. Her palms: empty.

 _I've got it,_ Marin said, her words faint. _I won't drop it, Link. Let's...let's go home._

Copper rusted over her mouth. She would have spat out the blood if not for Marin's dazed presence. Instead, swallowing it down past the resistance in her throat, Link followed quietly behind her.

In the house Marin removed something that resembled a journal from under the bed. For the sake of her privacy Link busied herself cleaning the Instruments, though they accumulated no grime. The door slammed. Link's head snapped up: Marin had left.

The journal. Unbidden her gaze had fallen upon it, turned to the first few pages. Blank. Blank as if no one had ever taken ink to the clean off-white. Steeling herself not to read any text, she flipped forward. Pages upon pages of blankness, blankness, blankness, until about halfway through the volume.

 _Someone new washed up today. I thought it was a giant grasshopper, but it was a person! She mistook me for someone named Zelda. I wonder who that is?_

The passage went on. She flipped forward, quickly enough that she could not read the words, only confirm that the remainder of her words remained. Though, curiously, some of the pages included passages entirely blank, like an invisible hand had lifted the ink up.

She reached the end of what Marin had written, a note about the amount of eggs that the cucco had laid that day, and then: _I wonder when she'll ask me. If she plans to ask me. Please, Wind Fish..._

Link smashed the journal closed. If she put her head in the fireplace, the lumber would be set aflame, judging from the heat of her face.

She swivelled about on her heel and came face-to-face with Marin in the doorway. Before she could start prostrating herself the girl whose journal she had read without permission, Marin took up the Wind Marimba to play its melodies.

 _It's okay,_ she mumbled without looking at Link. The keys tinkled under her gossamer touch. _Maybe someday I'll remember. It doesn't matter. One day I'll leave the island. One day I'll fly like a bird across the entire ocean. One day..._

* * *

On the morning of the seventh day the Golden Goddesses heed Link's call.

When the clouds gather at the line of the horizon Link and Marin watch them over the course of the day. The clouds darken and approach as the sun ascends to its throne on the sky, crests, and begins its descent. Conscious of knowledge passed on to her by the sailors at Harbour Town of Mido—including the advice that she should never take to the open sea by herself but always wait for a merchant's vessel; a journey she had expected to take a few days has now left her stranded from Hyrule for months—Link wiggles out of her clothes to soak them in the coming water. She removes the sail and then washes it alongside the tarp. Her gaze snaps to the tins and boxes scattered in the bowl at the centre of the raft. Marin seems to catch on, for she wraps her talons around the lid of the biscuit tin and struggles to open it.

Link works quickly. The wind nips at her skin. Even though she hasn't been in the water at all, somehow the salt has rubbed itself in a thin coating over her exposed flesh. Salt over everything: her hair, her clothing, the tarp, the outside of the tins and boxes.

She dumps the provisions into the bowl of the boat; she'll be tasting salt for a week. Her fingers fumble to open each of them at once and set them up. Next the sail and the tarp, now fixed into makeshifts buckets. And of course her clothing. The clouds draw ever more closely. Marin leaps up and down on the deck and Link can't help but laugh.

The first few droplets hit the boat. Link licks the water off of her palm. The acridity of seasalt fills her mouth and she pokes out her tongue, unable to dredge up enough moisture to spit. Marin flops to the deck and squawks, her wings raised up to her white-feathered belly.

 _Are you laughing at me?_ Link manages after a moment.

That only brings Marin to squawk more loudly. Link tries to arrange her features into an expression of admonishment but the mirth curves her mouth up instead.

The rain pours.

She closes the tins and boxes once they cannot hold more water, lest the dreaded salt beast enter and poison all it touches. The rain washes away the first layer of grime on the sail, the tarp, and her clothing. Link pours the water out. Setting them back up to soak in the rain, she watches with a grin as Marin does her part in helping, using her beak to unfurl enough of the sail for the salty water to drain to the ocean.

Link cups her hands together to collect rain enough to drink. The first mouthful goes down with surprising difficulty, as though she no longer knows how to swallow. The rest slide down her throat with ease until her stomach groans in pain. Wincing, she rubs her belly in clockwise circles. The water comes back up. She swallows it down. Not enough. Marin caws at her as she scrambles to the edge of the boat and vomits over the side.

She drinks more slowly this time. The water stays. She quits the cap from her head and runs her fingers through her hair, stuck together with sweat and salt. The rain runs down her bare skin.

She has not felt such relief since the moment she entered the Sanctum for the first time and saw the Golden Power awaiting her.

* * *

The island, a dream. The Wind Fish, dreaming in its slumber, the entirety of the island coalesced from the memories of the Wind Fish. The Gateways. The songs of the ocarina. The Nightmares, invaded, in the insecurities and fears of those swallowed up the dreams.

If anyone had even been swallowed up. Perhaps Tarin, and Ulrira, and the Mouse, and the bow-wows, and Marin, and herself, perhaps they all existed merely as bubbles on the surface of the sea of the Wind Fish's mind.

Her own memories. What part fact, what part fiction? Had she entered the dream in the storm, or did her entirety lie within the confines of the dreams?

Nayru's flippers, blessed with the power to propel herself through water, which she could remember distinctly she had purchased from the King of the Zora. Five hundred rupees, or something close to that. And yet perhaps those memories had come from the Wind Fish.

All of her could have come from the Wind Fish.

If Hyrule did not lie across the water—if Kakariko Village could sink into the dawn with night's end—if the years across which she had fought GANON, across which the people of Hyrule had suffered, across which the land had broken and healed—

If she had no home to which to return, then why should she recover the Instruments of the Sirens? She could live out the remainder of her life here. Despite the Nightmares that supposedly were taking over the island, they remained in the confines of the dungeons scattered about. She could gather mushrooms and honeycomb for Tarin every day. She could sit on the porch with a bowl of cucco stew every morning. She could stand by Marin's side at the edge of the cliff facing the ocean every sunset, to gaze out at the line where the sky met the sea.

Though she had travelled the world over, when she thought of peace, she thought of her house on the outskirts of Kakariko, of her daily bread, of the people of the village she knew. She had had her taste of adventure, of danger, of the suffering of the people of the land that would necessarily ensue. She could draw her blade if need be. Yet if she went the rest of her life with her sword in her sheathe she would bear no breath but that of gratitude.

But Marin. Marin, whose only wish lay in leaving. In departure. In the journey across the water.

And if Hyrule did exist—if she _had_ been swallowed up by the storm—then she would fight to her last breath to return.

She buried her face in the pillow. After her first day on Koholint when she had awoken in Marin's bed, she had vowed to take the floor, where she gathered a blanket into a makeshift mattress. Marin had insisted on a pillow at the least, one stuffed with cucco down that Marin had made herself. She had spread the blanket at the side of Marin's bed, at Marin's request. More than once Marin had accidentally stepped on Link's stomach in the morning, squeezing the breath out of her and bringing Marin to alternate apologising and laughing.

Tarin snored on the other side of the room. From outside she could faintly make out the multitude of cucco rustling in the henhouse and the crickets and frogs singing their songs. Marin's breaths, soft and slow, that lulled her to sleep like the roar of the waves she could hear from the beach, crashing in time with the inhalations and the exhalations of the girl beside her.

 _Link?_ Marin's voice brought her to lift her head from the pillow. _Are you asleep?_ Link glanced up to come face to face with Marin's hands, hanging from the edge of the bed. _Look up. Can you talk into my hands?_

Rolling onto her back, Link raised her own arms. When her fingertips brushed against the insides of Marin's palms, a shock of electricity raced down her skin. She traced the shapes of her thoughts; for the words that could not take form in the space of Marin's hands, she wrote out the letters against Marin's palms.

 _Are you okay?_ Marin whispered. _You usually fall asleep the second you hit the bed._

 _You've kept track of how I sleep?_ Link inquired in response.

Marin's palms slicked with sweat, or perhaps that sprang from Link's imagination. _I can't always sleep right away at night, and it—it doesn't take that much effort to notice that you're out in two seconds. Sometimes I don't even have time to blow out the candles and you're gone!_

 _Not so loud,_ Link answered, _or you'll wake Tarin._

The groan of the mattress indicated Marin scooting closer to the edge of the bed. A curtain of her hair fell to tickle Link's nose. She held back a sneeze as long as she could, and then sneezed anyway. Marin let out a quiet gasp in return and Link couldn't help but laugh under her breath.

 _Are you having trouble sleeping, Link?_

The laughter stopped.

 _I'm sorry,_ Marin murmured, _but every time you bring back a new Instrument of the Sirens, you just seem to get sadder, and sadder. And since you came back from the Face Shrine you've barely said a word. What's wrong, Link? You can tell me anything. You don't_ have _to wake the Wind Fish, you know?_

 _Do you want me to? Do you want me to wake the Wind Fish, Marin?_

For a moment Marin didn't reply. Instead she closed her fingers over her palms. Link lowered her own hands. Then: _I don't know. I don't know. I want the Wind Fish to be woken if it means that everyone on the island can leave, because I want to leave. But if it means that only you will leave..._ Her words trailed off. Her fingers relaxed, and when Link touched the tips of her fingers to Marin's, she drew Link's hands into a tight grip with their fingers almost intervened. _I don't want to be selfish. That's not what I mean. I know that you're going to leave the island one day, one way or another. I don't want you stuck here forever like I am. But I don't want to be alone here, either._

Link would have spoken but that would have involved slipping her hands away from Marin's, and so instead she listened.

 _No one here cares. And I'm afraid that if I stay here I'll stop caring, too. As long as you're here I know that I won't stop,_ because _you're here. But if you gather the Instruments and you wake the Wind Fish and you and_ only _you leave, then I'll be alone again. And it means I'll have to gather the Instruments if only one person can leave at a time, and I already tried and I can't—I'm afraid that, that it's something about the island. I can't even remember where we lived before we came here. Every day I try to think of a scrap of anything that came before, or even how old I was when I came, but I can't. All the time I've spent on the island just melts into one. I must've remembered at some point. I must've! But I—_ Her words faltered. _I can't—_

A cessation in the snores followed by a loud creak meant that Tarin had gotten up from the bed. Link's hands emptied: Marin had rolled herself back onto the bed instead of hanging off the side. Tarin crossed the house unsteadily, muttering to himself, to collect a drink of water or a snack from the cupboards. Link listened to him crunching noisily prior to returning to sleep.

Marin did not return to speak to her again. Not this night, at least.

Tomorrow. The island being a dream. She would ask. And then, another day. And on that day she would ask Marin, not of the island, or of the dream, but of returning to Hyrule with her. She _would_ ask.

She had to.

* * *

They lose the sail, about a day after the last of the water collected in it has run dry. She remembers the moment just before the loss: the wind carrying the raft just so. Marin asleep in her lap. Herself, seated cross-legged, hands wrapped about the post that held the sail.

When she awakens with her forehead on the wood and her palms against her knees, she bolts upright. Looks about, for the sail or the plank or both. One nail remains in the roughly rectangular spot in the wood, crooked as a lightning bolt. The others, and the sail, nowhere to be seen.

Her cries wake Marin, who caws softly. She covers her face with her hands though no tears come.

She stays that way for a time. The monsters she has faced, and the dungeons into which she has dived, and the lives she has risked over and over. The wounds that have patterned her body with Hyrule's history. The injuries she has sustained, and mended, and sustained again. The blades always at her side, the artefacts she has wielded, the shield on her back. Even when her satchel emptied of meat and drink, she needed only find the courage to take it from GANON's forces or else to find her way out of the cavern and return.

Not powerless then. Nor when she had become a rabbit capable only of running to find a way to the Light World once more. Nor when she had taken a leap of faith through the broken peak of the Sacred Pyramid. Nor when she had faced GANON, incarnate, the Blade of Evil's Bane in one hand and the lantern she had chanced to take with her the night her uncle had left in the other.

But this. Here. Now. After Hyrule, and Labrynna, and Holodrum, and Koholint, will the mundane nature of a shipwreck see her final breath? Not even the heart vessels would keep her alive without the food and water to sustain them; she can feel the emptiness in the containers that have kept from the brink of demise countless times. Her thoughts have drifted in the past to where her sword may sleep, but here her blade lies somewhere beneath the waves.

No. She will not die.

Then she exhales.

With the wisdom learned in her time on ships; the power of her own strong hands; and the courage to survive with Marin beside her, she will not die, she will not die, she will not die.

She will survive. She will live.

She finds a bit of dried apple and the net that she cast aside. She lies down at the side of the raft. She waits for hours. She catches the fish. She lets the small ones go until a heftier fish, blue and green, fights against the mesh. She dumps it onto the deck and holds it flat.

The tin of biscuits ends its struggle.

Her nails dig in. She works to piece the fish apart. She tastes the blood. The pang of iron overbears the salt, and it lubricates her throat on the way down.

She collects the remains in a water-skin and drinks. The blood sticks in her throat. She swallows hard, chokes on the stench. The remains she casts off: while the food she fished out remains, eating raw flesh seems akin to sticking her entire hand into a snap dragon's waiting maw.

Never has she drunk blood, but the alternative means accepting the end of her own life for nothing at all.

Marin butts her head against Link's wrist. She caws. If she'd kept her voice as a bird, Link reflects, she would sing to the skies.

But she can't, not as she is at the moment, or else doesn't want to.

And if Link were to close to her eyes for a final time to leave Marin alone, then Marin may never sing again.

She forces herself to finish drinking. The water-skin deflates. The insides of the leather still stink of the streaks of blood left behind. Link kneels on the deck, her gaze riveted on the water-skin in her hands.

A mistake: the blood in the leather will fester. She seals the water-skin as best she can and returns it to the deck. Then she takes up her net again.

* * *

When she gazed upon the Organ of Evening Calm waiting for her upon her descent from the peak of Eagle Tower, she nearly wept. The instrument spread before her, larger than her body, the keys shifting through every colour of the rainbow and then some, beneath the dancing hues a faintly glittering silver as though spun of moonlight. She rested her hands on the keys. The music of the Organ resonated through her very bones. From deep within the Organ's voice reverberated:

 _Ocarina...the music of the ocarina leads..._

As usual the memories of the Wind Fish warped about her and she found herself outside of the tower once more, now a level shorter than when she had come.

Link braced herself but the Organ of Evening Calm would not yield. Too heavy to even push. Smoothing the tunic over her backside, she seated herself cross-legged on the gravel. Stones pressed into her lower legs. She buried her face with her hands.

Then she breathed out, and placed her hand upon the hilt of her sword, and withdrew the ocarina from her belt to turn the smooth instrument over and over in her palms.

The ocarina. Manbo's mambo took her to the pond from which she trekked through the Mabe Woods, her footfalls muffled for the thick spring grass. She found Gateway by the village and flung herself into it time and time again until she tumbled out into the shallow water by the Animal Village.

Perhaps able to read her soul from the sole expression on her face, the denizens of the village rapidly directed her to the house of the Goat lady letter-writer whose name escaped Link. Marin perched on the chair across from the lady's desk, singing the song that Link had taught her, the song of the boy on the stump.

Link paused in the doorway to listen. Never had she heard the melody sound so beautiful as the day that the boy on the stump had played it for her, disappearing when she came near for the frailty of his memory outside of the Sacred Realm that had transformed him. She had never captured the wonder in his notes for all of years carrying the ocarina, and now Marin had given voice to the boy voiceless these seven long years.

When Marin finished, the lady gestured towards Link. Marin turned. Her eyes sparkled and Link's face sparked into a spontaneous inferno.

The two of them walked side by side. Marin's feet seemed to hover a full centimetre above the ground for how her joy at partaking in Link's adventure made her skip. As they walked she inquired of the weathercock Link had awoken, and Link told her of the cucco house, which made Marin giggle in happiness.

She turned aside when Link slew monsters, and after a time Link defected to simply hurrying them past to avoid conflict. Through the plains and then up the mountains. They emerged from the subterranean cavern network to Tal Tal Heights. While Link stayed clear of the edge Marin rushed over to look at Koholint Island dropping away before her.

 _You can see the whole island from here!_ Marin's grin brought a smile to Link's own lips. The wind fanned her hair around her head like the rays of a reddish-brown sun. The flower slipped from the side of her head: Link lunged to the side and caught it in her cupped hands.

Marin covered her mouth with her hand. Her face had covered a gamut of emotion in the span of less than a second: shock, fear, relief, something heavy and warm that Link could not identify.

 _My hero,_ she called Link and bowed her head. _I'd like you to put it back on for me._

With surprisingly unsteady hands Link did as requested. _I dub thee my knight._

Marin burst out laughing at that. _What would you ask of me, oh Princess of Koholint?_

Link curtseyed with the hem of her tunic. Her motions took on a grace and care she normally forewent. _Would you carry for me my fine instrument?_

 _Anything for Your Majesty._ Marin giggled to herself until they came to Eagle Tower. Then she blinked. _You're serious._

Link nodded, smiling apologetically.

 _The things I do for love,_ Marin muttered as she took a position behind the Organ of Evening Calm. Though Link must have had misheard. Of course, she had misheard. No other explanation. Link paced about the cliffside as she observed Marin heft the Instrument up.

 _How is it? Can you carry it?_

Marin exhaled. _I'll try. It's_ not _light as a feather for me, thank goodness, but I can try._

Link sighed, then tapped Marin's shoulder. _If you ever need a break, please tell me, and don't push yourself._

 _I promise I won't._

Still Link tapped her boots repetitively against the ground, and Marin set down the Organ of Evening Calm to wag her finger at Link.

 _If you're that worried about me, you could've asked anyone else, you know?_

Link raised her hands, found no answer forthcoming, and lowered them again.

Marin's voice softened. _...why me?_

 _Because,_ Link replied in motions staccato and jerky, _I didn't even think to ask anyone else. If there's anyone I would trust the Instruments with—if there's anyone I would want to walk for hours with—it's you._

Marin's face reddened until her cheeks resembled the flower in her hair. _You dummy,_ she managed and then, before Link could even think of what to say back, she hid herself behind the Instrument's keys and walked on.

They started on the journey back, but then Link snapped her fingers. Instead of walking all the way back they would take the raft. The hundred rupees meant far less to her than Marin's safety. The rapids bumped them and Marin clung to the back of Link's tunic.

Link grinned to herself, her mouth concealed behind the paddle of the oar, as she took them down the waterfalls.

They left the raft in the water. The now-familiar road through Mabe Woods was marked by frequent breaks so that Marin could rest her arms. Occasionally she would press a key against her stomach or chest by accident and as the Organ of Evening Calm held the tone, the world around them seemed to still to harmony. Progress moved more slowly than the sun's downwards arc, and Link lit their path with a lantern.

Night hushed the birds and instead sang the evening chorus. Marin joined her voice to theirs.

 _It sounds like you're waking the stars themselves,_ Link remarked offhandedly. Marin blushed again. _You sing so beautifully it feels like a dream._ She gasped sharply enough to hurt her throat.

 _Link? What happened?_

 _Marin._ Her hands flew over her words. _The island. A dream. The Face Shrine. The owl told me that the island—not the owl, but a mural—all of this, the dream of the Wind Fish, and that—when the Wind Fish wakes, everything will vanish._

To her enduring credit Marin did not drop the Organ of Evening Calm but, like the Instrument she bore in her embrace, merely stood calmly as her eyes met Link's. _A dream,_ she repeated.

 _A dream. And if I wake the Wind Fish, then maybe everyone will vanish. I was thinking, maybe I don't_ have _any real memories. What if Hyrule isn't real? What if, if I wake the Wind Fish, I'll cease to exist, and you'll cease to exist, and everything will—_

Her fingers twitched and jerked. The motions faltered to a halt. She let her arms fall limply to her sides, to rest her palm on the hilt of the sword at her hip to seek some familiarity.

Marin stooped down to place the Organ of Evening Calm down upon the ground amongst the soft grass that spread about the Instrument. She rose up again and flicked dust from her dress. An insect buzzed somewhere off to Link's right; from further ahead in the wood came the burble of a nearby creek. The evening had cooled, and now the sweat on the back of her neck chilled her clammy skin.

 _I had memories._ In the lantern light Marin's eyes appeared thin discs of gold. _I had memories of what I was before, but then I lost them. You know things that I don't. You know about the zora! You know about the places on the other side of the ocean. I haven't heard of the zora before and there's no one else on the island that knows about them. But people come full of their own stories about things. I've heard of Holodrum and Labrynna before, I think. It's hard because—because the island takes away the things you've heard, too, but since you mentioned them, I've had this weird inkling like I've heard of those places before. I feel like someone told me about them. If I try to think too hard about it, though, my mind feels like a fog and I can't push through it. That's what I think the island does: the longer you stay here, the more you become part of the island, until you don't even remember what you were before the island._

 _Marin._ Link's fingers fluttered with the girl's name. _Where did you learn the Ballad of the Wind Fish?_

 _I..._ Marin set her jaw. _I don't remember exactly. I remember listening to the island around me. To the wind, to the waves, even to the calls of the animals. Not the Animals, the ones in Animal Village, but the animals, you know._

Link nodded. She seated herself in the grass, the blades tickling her skin; Marin knelt down across from her. The lantern flame glowed between them. A pool of light.

 _And somehow I could hear the Ballad of the Wind Fish in everything around me. I started to pick up the melody, and sing it, and whenever I did it's like the entire island went still. I figured out the notes. And I've held to them ever since. I felt like it must be a key to the island. And when I went into the Dream Shrine—_

Link must have made some sort of abrupt motion, for Marin waved a hand, prompting her to sit back.

 _I did go into the Dream Shrine. It was before those rocks were there. There was...there was something else there, I'm sure of it, but now I can't remember what. I think I remember...it was_ something, _I know that much. There was something that I had to use to get to it. I slept in the bed, and I dreamed I was in another place. There were gaps in the floor and I had to jump over them—I think I had something; I think I had wings—and at the end there was...there was_ something. _Something, and I think it made my voice prettier, or something like that. Something about my voice. There were monsters everywhere, but I just ran past them. I've never been good with hurting things. Sometimes I had to, in self-defence, or to get through..._ Marin lowered the lids over her eyes until the lashes just touched the curves of her cheeks. _That doesn't make me a bad person, does it?_

Link waited for her to look up at her again before she responded: _I've hurt monsters on the way to Tal Tal and back down, in front of you. Does that make_ me _a bad person?_

 _I...I don't think so._ Marin rubbed her arms. _I don't know what the monsters are._

 _They're manifestations of evil, or something like that. Or usually, they're controlled by magic and malicious feelings. Hyrule hasn't had monsters since the Triforce was restored. When I came to Labrynna and Holodrum, monsters had infested there, but the world straightened up again, the monsters fled there, too. You know, when you slay them, they don't leave bodies. They're animated by heart vessels._ Like herself, she wanted to add, but the sacrifices she had made on the part of Hyrule were not Marin's burden to bear.

 _Link..._ Marin shivered. _You're a hero outside of Koholint, aren't you? I know not every swordswoman is a hero. But the things you've done, and how nonchalantly you seem about it all, and what you've told me—_

 _I-I didn't say that I had anything to do with the monsters,_ Link answered, her arms moving so rapidly that she nearly knocked over the lantern with the final phrase.

Marin turned her head towards the wood. Past the edge of the lantern's light the forest lay in darkness and quiet. The wind through the trees; the footfalls of night animals; the occasional croak of a toad. Beyond that stillness had fallen upon the wood, or so the world felt to Link. The experienced side of her knew of the creatures fighting to survive even in the seeming tranquillity of the dark. Yet the other part covered that truth with that which made the world easier to bear.

The other part...?

As she listened she could make out a rhythm pulsating in the croaks of the toads. She could hear the resonance of the wind through the trees. Her mouth dried.

The Ballad of the Wind Fish.

 _It doesn't matter if I'm a hero or not, Marin._

 _No,_ Marin said, her shoulders shaking, still looking out at the wood, although the response let Link know that she was paying enough attention to her to read her hands, _but it explains why you've gotten so far. It's not just about courage. It's...if you can't make it through there then...you just can't. I could risk my life a hundred times over but that's not enough. You have to_ be _a hero, too. And I didn't have time to get the skills I needed—didn't have become to_ become _a hero like you—before the island took me up. It never mattered. Everything I did was pointless. Then you showed up and you're just...breezing through like you've got the wind at your back._

Curling her fingers around the hem, Link removed her green tunic to leave on the brown undershirt. _You should put this on._

When Marin rotated her head about to fix her gaze onto Link her eyes had hardened into shards of glass. The vitriol in her voice burned Link more fiercely than the flames of the fire rod. _What, so I can play hero?_

Link set the tunic down between them, next to the lantern. _...I thought you were cold. I'm sorry._

At that Marin either cried or laughed or both. In the lantern light Link couldn't quite tell. She drew the tunic over her shoulders; it fit her loosely, and Link supplied her the belt to cinch the tunic at the waist.

 _If only the tunic were blue, or red, then it'd fit better, I think,_ Marin noted with a giggle. That alone had brought the smile back to her.

 _Maybe I'll find another tunic then. If it's blue or red you can have it. Back home I have a collection of rings that imbue what you wear with magic rings to make you more resilient, or to increase the power of your strikes, and some of them change your armour too. So even if it's not blue now, it can be in the future._

 _That's going to be my welcome?_ Marin poked Link in the rib with a slender finger. _Hello Marin, welcome to Hyrule, here's a box of rings._

Link tilted her head to one side, her hands messing up the first gesture. _D-don't girls like jewellery?_

 _Do_ you _like jewellery?_

Link paused. _When it has some effect, I guess. I've never really gotten the thing about trying to wear jewellery to...look pretty...?_ She rested her hands on her knees. _Oh._

 _But since you said that the rings have all sorts of neat magic to them, I'm sure I'll like 'em._ Marin grinned, alternating between propping up her chin in her hands and smoothing out the tunic. _It kind of smells of you._

The heat rose to the tips of her ears. She tugged down the hem of the cap and coughed into her hand. Marin's grin merely embiggened, and the girl leaned forward.

 _What's wrong, Link?_

Link dug her fingers into the skin of her knees. She ducked her head to avoid Marin's gaze. The girl tipped her head back in laughter. Then Marin stood up to slide the Organ of Evening Calm back into her arms.

 _Come on, Link. If we stay here any longer the whole forest is going to catch fire, and then what'll we do?_ She could scarcely speak for the laughter bubbling up from her stomach. As Link followed her lead she could hear Marin laugh hard enough to gasp for breath. _Li—_

Abruptly: a crunch. She needed not to think of drawing her sword, for the moment she extended her arm the seashell blade already lay grasped in her fingers.

The moblin wielded a bow, one arrow already notched, and as the dog-like beast took aim Link bunched her legs beneath her to leap.

And then recalled Marin, immediately behind her.

She had not time to replace the roc's feather with her shield. The arrowhead plunged into her abdomen.

Marin screamed.

With the force of the radial pain that spiralled from just above her right hip, Link swung her right leg forward and then feinted left. The blade curved upwards and connected with the bottom of the moblin's arrow arm. It sank through the flesh and back out. The stump left behind showered her with a spray of blood. She could sense more than see the arc of the bow repurposed as a club. This time she leaped. The bow swung beneath her feet. On the downwards swing she plunged the blade earthward: her boots landed on the moblin's shoulders and her sword in the moblin's skull.

The monster toppled backwards to take Link with her. She rolled forward. Her knee came up and snapped the arrow shaft sticking out from her undershirt. She could hear the tell-tale _puff_ of the moblin's corpse falling to dust.

She breathed. Rose to her feet. Sheathed her sword and faced Marin, who rushed up to her, the Organ of Evening Calm forgotten in the grass.

 _I'm fine._ Link momentarily pressed a hand over the remainder of the arrow lodged yet within her. _I promise. I couldn't die from this if I wanted to._ Marin bit her lower lip and Link shook her head. _Let's get home._

With her palm over the wound, Link did not speak on the journey back. Marin carried the Organ of Evening Calm without another sound. When they arrived to Mabe at last, she ushered Link through the door. Tarin greeted them as they entered with a wave of the hand. A flash of worry contorted his features for a few seconds but then passed.

 _Hullo, Marin. Hullo, Link._

Marin directed Link to sit on the bed. _Can you take this?_ she said to her father, brandishing the Instrument. _I need to attend to Link._

 _Take what?_ Tarin inquired, the easygoing smile yet on his lips.

 _This! The Instrument!_

Link could see Tarin gaze in the direction of Marin's arms, but past them, not focusing on the Instrument, as if the Organ of Evening Calm did not exist for him.

Without another word Marin placed the Organ of Evening Calm beside the other Instruments of the Sirens. She retrieved salves and potions from the cupboards.

 _Show me the injury._

Obediently Link lifted her undershirt and tucked it under her chin to keep it from falling back down. She found the remaining length of the shaft protruding from her skin. Gingerly she took the shaft within two fingers and spun. The agony nearly blacked her out.

Yet the arrowhead moved.

 _Pull it out,_ Link said. _It didn't reach a bone. Even if I faint, please pull it out._ Marin's eyebrows knit together into a band of worry across her brow. _I promise I won't die. I can't._

Tarin had no forceps with which to pull out the arrowhead, and though Link assured Marin that she could try it with her bare hands, Marin went out into the night.

Upon Marin's request Ulrira had produced a pair of forceps, as the girl explained upon her return. Link wadded a towel and bit down on the thick fabric. Marin braced herself against the edge of the bed.

The pain jolted her; red sparked across her closed eyelids; the nerves over her abdomen writhed like someone had jammed a hot poker into the wound. Warm wetness moved over her lower belly and onto her thigh.

A soft touch that despite its gentleness spread threads of agony. Link clawed into her undershirt to avoid squirming as much as possible. In Marin's hand she beheld red salve taken from a small jar. If she looked down at the injury her head would swim with blood loss and so she kept her gaze level.

She would not die. But that wouldn't save her from the bruises and the scars.

To Link's surprise Tarin had little interest in the goings-on. He walked about almost in a daze. If prompted directly, he would respond warmly, yet gave no indication of awareness of the blood dripping over his house floor, the muffled moans of pain that escaped Link's throat, or the seven Instruments occupying a good fourth of the space of the room. Tarin tucked himself in for the night and merely bid them to blow out the candles when they were finished.

Marin wrapped gauze, also taken from Ulrira, around Link's body. _You should rest for a few days,_ she instructed as she worked. She ran her hands over Link's stomach, her sides, her lower back, and Link focused her thoughts on the pain to avoid unwanted reactions. _The island won't vanish under your feet if you let yourself heal._

 _It won't vanish, but my memories might._

Link could feel Marin's fingers slow in their tying of the gauze. _If you_ die _then you'll never get off the island. And neither will I._

 _I promise I won't die. I'll know before I'm about to die. You haven't seen what I look like when I venture into dungeons,_ Link countered, keeping her gestures as smooth as possible. _There's a few things about me that you don't..._

 _That I don't, what?_ The sharpness of her tone cut through Link's convictions, and her hands fell as a discarded puppet's.

 _That you don't know about me, yet._

 _Yet,_ Marin repeated. Her features relaxed. She finished wrapping the gauze about Link and sat back, gathering the medical supplies into Ulrira's kit again. _I'll hold you to that. That "yet" is going to mean an entire world, I hope you know. At least take tomorrow off to heal a little. Then you go back to diving into whatever dangers you want._

Link nodded sheepishly. Marin winked and left to bring back the kit.

Only the following morning, when Link set about her morning routine of practising with the blade, did the implications of Marin's earlier words thunk Link in the head.

The box of rings. Showing Marin. Her _home._

Marin asked her about the goofy grin she bore through the remainder of the day and Link merely shrugged.

 _You dummy!_ Marin called her, playfully slapping her shoulder. Link's grin only grew in response.

* * *

Once every few days she lucks upon a fish she can drain of liquid. On those days she affords herself to eat enough to keep up her strength.

It does not rain. She does not ration the water in the tarp for fear of its evaporation. While she cannot sleep beneath the tarp, she wets her clothing in the water during the morning and the day to keep herself cool, and lets them dry in the afternoon sun to warm her at night.

When the water in the tarp runs out she returns to rationing. The water kept in the different tins and boxes keeps longer, particularly once she hangs up the tarp again. She controls her drink. Every time her body screams at her to drain the entire tin, but she forces herself to tear away and close it. The water sloshes noisily as she puts it in its resting place under the tarp. Her mouth can no longer water but her throat constricts. The noisier the slosh, the less water left; the noisier the slosh, the drier her throat.

When she urinates on occasion, for how little it is, she considers drinking what liquid she can.

She knows not to. But her breaths rasp down a throat arid enough to hurt.

The days melt into one another. Link spends much of her time leaning over the raft, bug-catching net clutched in one hand. As she lies with her stomach against the wood she frees her hands to speak. She asks Marin careful questions one after another to settle on a topic. She tells Marin of her home, of Hyrule, of her uncle, of swimming in Lake Hylia in the southeast, of the climb up Death Mountain in the northeast, of traversing the Parapa Desert to the southwest, of finding her way through the Lost Woods to the northwest and the Hebra mountains beyond, where sleeps the Blade of Evil's Bane. By chance she notes the Temple of Nayru in the Parapa Desert, carefully cared for by the people of the desert before GANON's forces had driven them out to safer havens in Kakariko.

The mere mention of the Temple of Nayru snatches Marin's attention. _I know what the desert was like on Koholint, but plenty of people live in the Parapa Desert,_ Link explains instead with a faint smile. _It was abandoned while monsters guarded it, since they didn't want anyone getting the three Pendants, but I've been to the Parapa Desert after that, and so many people call it their home!_

Marin shakes her head and stamps her feet. Link grins.

 _Oh, do you want me to tell you more about them? There's this village called Rauru that I've been to. I didn't know that much of the Gerudo tongue when I went but everyone was so kind—_

More stamping until Link relents.

For the first time in the five years since the Princess's rescue Link finds herself speaking of the night her uncle told her to stay in bed. Of the night her courage and curiosity took her to the dungeons of Hyrule Castle. Of the night she knelt before the Princess of Hyrule for the first time. Of the many long nights that followed. Of the three pendants. Of Agahnim.

She hesitates and falls silent when she need talk of the Sacred Realm. Instead she turns to the different monsters, elaborates on the traps and secret passageways in the labyrinthine dungeons of GANON without mentioning their place in the world.

The instant she spots a shadow large enough she twirls the net waiting in the water. Marin does her part in catching fish. The small ones come somewhat easily but have little to show except for meat Link can't eat.

Her clothes grow baggier. _From being stretched,_ she assures Marin. She need not circle her biceps with her fingers to feel the weakness that has slackened her muscles.

Without the sail they have no means of moving forward: the tarp hangs too heavy to be pushed along by the wind. They drift. The days turn to nights turn to days turn to nights turn to days. No matter how many fish they catch and how much blood she forces down her gullet with the stink that plugs her nose and would bring her eyes to tears if not for the lack of water in her form, she cannot replenish what liquid she knows her body needs.

It does not rain.

The amount of water remaining in the boxes lowers.

It does not rain.

And then runs dry.

It does not rain.

One morning she opens her eyes and the clouds have blurred together. When she sits up she looks down to find herself staring at four hands and two Marins who move in unison. She blinks at the double dream Marin cawing loudly at her and trampling her chest with their four feet and many more talons than she can number. The front of her head pounds as if her heart had spontaneously left her chest and taken up residence at the fore of her cranium instead. Then she lies down to go back to sleep.

The sun overhead shines through her eyelids. Not the sun. A lantern, very close. No, not a lantern. The sun?

The sun. The sun. The sun.

The Golden Power of the Pyramid. GANON's yellowed eyes, burned away in the light.

Zelda in blue, her brown hair curled around her shoulders, the silver-gold tiara glittering at her forehead.

 _..._

 _Link..._

 _Link._

 _Wake up, Link._

 _Open your eyes._

Link raises her arms towards her. Zelda bows her head and dissipates into a fog of a maddeningly familiar scent, as though she were drifting across the ocean waves.

An unfamiliar sensation on her upper lip. She would lift a hand to brush it away but her arms have seemingly melted into her bed. Wetness. _Wetness._ It dribbles down onto her tongue which she also cannot move. Droplet by droplet. The wetness carries with it a taste that sours the insides of her mouth. Despairingly slowly the wetness dribbles down.

She keeps her mouth obediently open. Sometimes the drips cease for a time, and then begin again. Faintly she hears a song curling around her ears. Atop a high mountain breaks an egg, and from the epicentre the entire island shatters to float into the sky.

 _Link..._

 _Link._

She sleeps. She awakens. She sleeps. The clouds dance over her. She faces the Nightmares again one by one in grotesque, half-smelted forms. Beasts that cling to each other and double up on her, that suddenly disappear and reappear at will. They fling themselves towards the sun only to break their necks upon the ground. They encircle her, limbs flailing, bodies swollen and engorged as insect abdomens.

 _If you wake the Wind Fish, then all that is within the dream will cease to exist. And you, too. You are within the dream, Link._

She has no sword. She has no boots blessed by the Goddess Farore, nor flippers blessed by the Goddess Nayru, nor bracelet blessed by the Goddess Din, nor any of that which her mind forges together. No rod of ice nor rod of fire, none of the three medallions crafted by the Light Spirits, servants of the Goddesses, no bottle housing her ever companion, the humble golden bee.

The Nightmares float in puddles on the floor. She leans her lantern over them to light their reflections. From the ooze rise three figures, one of fair skin and two of dark. A Gerudo lady dressed in red; a Sheikah woman in blue; and a Hylia girl in green, holding forward a green book that seems to drift in and out of her vision.

The book of Mudora. No, Farore's records of secrets. No—she squints. Nayru and Din take up her either side.

 _We'll dance again one day, won't we? Come, another round. Show me your eyes._

 _Ah, if that girl is good with song, then you should introduce us._

 _You've not yet seen the secrets of the world, Link. You've not yet known the fruit of life._

They lift up a goblet of some liquid sloshing about. The surface glimmers opaque white. _Alcoholic milk,_ Farore giggles, _just as they make it in Kakariko._

She shakes her head. _I'm not of age,_ she tries to say, but her fingers have stuck together. They tilt her head back and pour it in.

The milk burns down her throat and sticks thickly in the centre. She cannot swallow. She chokes, coughs, finds her breath cut off by the mass in her throat.

Her chest bleeds in a pain she cannot source. Din and Nayru kneel over her, their nails in her flesh.

Her eyelids snap up. Her hands fly to her breast as she sits up. Marin tumbles from her chest, then lands on Link's head to sink her talons into her scalp. Before Link can make a sound Marin twists her head.

A sea turtle.

A sea turtle halfway on the boat, about the size of her own stomach. It flips its forelimbs weakly. Her arms move just as limply. Her legs numb, yet she snatches a plank of wood from the side of the raft with sufficient force to rip the rope.

She crawls to the sea turtle. It tries to slide off the raft but she brings the plank down on its head, and then again, and again, and again, until it stops moving. She drags it onto the deck centimetre by centimetre. Her arms give. Marin hops towards the turtle. Link watches her drive her beak into the turtle's neck repeatedly, to tear at the flesh with her talons, until blood glistens wetly in the wound.

Blood.

Warm and viscous. She drinks. First a little. Then more. The memory of her vomiting from the rain dredges up more horror than she can handle, and so she goes slowly. Marin tears strips of meat from the turtle's body and 'masticates' them with her beak before dropping them in front of Link. She can hardly chews but she swallows the smaller pieces down.

The strength courses through her limbs until she can move her fingers freely once again.

 _Thank you,_ she says to Marin, and then turns back to eating.

* * *

The first boomerang she had held in her life, she had taken from an armoury for the guardsmen of Hyrule Castle. Most of the armoury had been stripped bare for the soldiers steadily falling under GANON's influence. Blue and silver the boomerang had shone. Years thereafter she would toss her boomerang into the Waterfall of Wishing. The magic of the Great Fairy dyed the boomerang a bright and resilient red.

Now she took the same bright red boomerang into her hand. A creature she had never seen before had traded it to her for a shovel. _Where'd I come from, and why do I got a boomerang?_ the creature had told her. _It's a secret to everybody. No, really, I ain't tryin' to be coy here. I dunno. I can't 'member a thing, except that this all feels pretty familiar, y'know? Some stupid kid in green takin' a boomeranger from one of us goriya. But that all sounds like a story from years ago. But then I don't think I've ever stepped foot off'a Koholint..._

Where the boomerang, even with the magic of the Great Fairy, had served little purpose but to stun enemies long enough for her to dash in, sword at the ready, this new boomerang cleaved through monsters with a mere touch. Had her love of it transferred to the Wind Fish's dreams?

Marin accompanied her as she tested the boomerang on the monsters along Toronbo Shores. She had forbidden Link from going out and exploring until the injury healed fully.

 _What if I forget?_ Link asked, absentmindedly cutting the grass and allowing the life-force of the plants to settle in her sinews, to mend her muscles, to bond to bone.

 _It takes people years. A few days won't hurt you. I promise._ Marin turned to face the cliffside. _Link, do you remember when we went on our first walk here? C'mon. I want to go there again._

Link followed her as she half-skipped, half-ran her way up to the cliff's edge that overlooked the ocean. Again the scent of the seaflower. The wind rolling up from the shores. The waves crowned with white breaking themselves against the cliff. The sun halfway up its ascent, bathing the sea in its warmth.

 _It's been so long since then. Or maybe it's been no time at all. Every day is the same on Koholint. I don't even think the seasons change. I wonder if I've grown up at all, or if I came here like this._ She gestured to her dress. No, not to her dress, but to herself. _Link, I...I'm sorry for keeping you chained to me while you healed. For...for keeping you from finding the last Instrument these past few days._ Her fingers curled inwards. _That was...my real motivation._

 _You're right about letting the injury heal,_ Link answered, leaning her elbows on the ridge of the cliffside.

Yet Marin shook her head; the flower almost dislodged from her head. _I...I said that because I'm afraid. I don't want you to lose your memories like everyone else did! You said yourself you can't die without_ knowing _you're about to die, and I've seen you heal just by doing that thing with cutting the grass. I don't know how, but...it's like the monsters, isn't it? How they_ won't _until they_ die? _You could've been fine a week ago if you just spent a few minutes doing that, couldn't you?_

Link fixed her gaze instead on the horizon.

Marin pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. _I just...I don't even know what I've lost since I came here. And my father...my father can't even see the Instruments anymore. You noticed that. He can't see when things are_ wrong _anymore. He's just...happy, happy to stay on the island forever. Like a character from a story instead of a real person._ She hugged herself. _I'm sorry, Link. I shouldn't always be putting all of this on you. I'm just some girl you met on an island, and you've been trying to get back home and I've just made everything that much more complicated._

When the words Marin needed failed to apparate at Link's fingertips, Link stepped towards her instead, and embraced her, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, her arms encircling Marin's upper back. She could sense Marin's heartbeat thudding against her chest, or perhaps the heartbeat was her own.

After a handful of breaths Marin rested her chin on Link's shoulder. She leaned her cheek on Link's. Her hair and the flower on the side of her head filled Link's vision, became her entire world.

The warm weight of Marin in her embrace. How her quiet inhalations pushed her chest against Link's. How she smelled of seaflower, of cucco feathers, of rosin and oil for the instruments, of freshly cut grass, of seafoam, of home.

 _I tried to ask him,_ Marin whispered, _about where we'd come from. He looked at me like he hadn't heard me. I asked him again, really slowly, and he said that he'd been here for as long as he could remember, and if I was feeling well. But I know I haven't been on this island forever. I remember being out there. I remember the ocean. I remember other places. I remember—I remember flying—in my dreams, I'm flying. I don't know what that means. Maybe it's just that...just a dream. But I remember that. I don't know what it means._

Link nodded into her shoulder.

 _I know the island takes memories. I...the journal. I wouldn't have started writing in the middle of the journal. When I stopped remembering those things, when the memories faded, the dream took them from my journal, too. But I don't know what triggers it. I can't figure it out. And I'm afraid. If you leave...if you leave, and I'm still here, then I'll become like_ them _too. I won't even know it. I'll just be...content to live here. I won't be_ me _anymore. But._

Her voice hardened. Instinctively Link clung to her more tightly.

 _I can't keep you here. I won't do that to you. Whatever happens when you wake the Wind Fish will happen. Maybe I'll get to try again._

She fell silent. At this Link unwound her arms from around Marin's shoulders. She stepped back just enough to give her space to speak. _Marin,_ Link started, _I'm sorry for looking through your diary. I shouldn't've invaded your privacy like that. I wanted to tell you that for a while but never got the chance._

 _It's okay._ Marin offered her a smile, yet Link didn't find it within her to return it. _You don't seem like the kind of girl to do that on a regular basis. And I wanted you to know, I guess. It's complicated. I...don't worry about it, Link._

The corners of Link's mouth curved downwards. _I wasn't looking for forgiveness._

 _I'm forgiving you anyway. I wanted to show you. Everything gone since you washed up. I told you, that there've been other people who washed up before, so I don't think it's because you showed up or anything like that. Though th—_

Marin ceased mid-word. Link waited.

Marin stared at Link as though seeing her for the first time. When she spoke at last her syllables rolled out with excruciating slowness. _You brought back the Full Moon Cello._

Link inclined her head.

 _And when you brought it back, you started on your own quest. That I'd failed. I don't have all of my memories of it, but before you came here, I...I wanted to get off Koholint so much that I—I went to Tail Cave, and to Bottle Grotto, and Key Cavern, and Angler's Tunnel. I remember scraps of them. I remember the names. I knew the Instruments somehow. I don't know why I never questioned it. But then the Wind Marimba...I went to Catfish's Maw, and I don't know what happened, but I gave up. I think I—I think I died. I think I died and when I woke up again it was like a dream. You haven't_ really _died in any of the dungeons, have you?_

Link had to shake her head in response.

 _You can die in the dream and not really die. But if you die you lose yourself, or part of yourself. Maybe you only ever get one chance at it. And if you die, then that's it. No more happily ever after. No more true ending. Just the island, forever._

She started to shape a reply but Marin continued over her, and she let her fingers dangle uselessly.

 _When you came, and you brought back the Full Moon Cello, I think you're maybe the first person since me to actually get at least_ one _of them. And then that...that bumped out my memories. I'd written so much. I—I think that before you came, I can remember wings—no, not when you came to the island, but before that before that—but maybe that was just one of the items. Every dungeon has one. I think they come from our memories. They're objects that we've touched, save for the feather. Both of us had a feather, I think. The Wind Fish's feather._

She spoke now to herself more so than to Link. Still Link listened in silence, quietly forming _I'm-sorrys._ What could she say? That she was sorry for washing up on the island shore? That she was sorry for taking Marin's memories, however inadvertently? That she was sorry for having done what Marin had failed?

 _I still remember some things, but not enough. I...Link._ Link raised her gaze until she could look into Marin's eyes, deep as the ocean at the bottom of the cliff. _No matter what happens, promise me that you won't forget me. I know that I taught you the Ballad of the Wind Fish, but can I teach you something else? It's a song I think I came up with myself. I don't know what to call it, but...if you learn it, then you won't forget me. You'll pass on my memory. If I can't sing to the world then at least_ you _can._

 _Marin,_ Link saw herself answering, without even the slightest hesitation, _I would learn anything from you that you wanted to teach me, and I love—_ Marin's eyes widened— _to listen to you sing, even if the song were the worst thing in the world._

Marin covered her mouth with her hand. _You really are too sweet. And you really are a dummy at the same time. I don't know what to do with you, sometimes._

 _Sing for me?_ Link presented the ocarina in her palms, a sacrificial offering.

Without another word Marin turned to face the ocean. Though the sun now hovered directly overhead, Link's vision seemed to cloud with pink and gold as though sunrise or sunset had fallen again. The island, again. She listened to Marin test her voice. She sang up three octaves and down again. She tapped out a rhythm on her fingers. She sighed.

And then she sang.

No words could describe that which Link heard. Nothing written could account for the voice, for the tone, for the melody. She closed her eyes instead and let the song take her adrift. On a raft beyond her dreams, to tip over the waterfall.

Her world ended when she was ten. Her memories of the years before had fogged over the years, replaced with the cries of monsters and victims alike. Her uncle, yes. And then, at ten, she had taken up her sword.

Eight years had seen her footprints on the world over. Eight years. Eight years that she had spent alone. She had dwelled in the houses of many, and eaten at the tables of even more. She had had allies greater than any she could have imagined; without their constant help and support, she would not have celebrated her eleventh year on the Earth. And yet in the life of one day to another, one foot in front of the other, one breath in and the other out, she lived alone.

Adrift.

The melody sloped downwards. She could hear the spiral of its closure, as a bird spreading its wings to slow its descent just before landing.

Silence.

And then the world moved again:

 _What did you think?_

Link moved to replace the ocarina on its spot at her belt only to notice for the first time that the ocarina had fallen. She squatted down on her heels to pick it up from the sand.

 _Never mind. Your face tells me everything I need to know._ Before Link could apologise Marin raised a flat hand. _I'm glad you enjoyed it._

 _Could you go over it again? More slowly? I want to learn it._ Link held up the ocarina. _I know my playing isn't that good, and I won't be doing it justice._

 _I never said that!_ Marin protested though she covered her mouth to laugh all the same. _You try, and that's the important thing. Here's the first part._

Marin taught Link note by note. Link held the songs in her mind, turning the melodies interwoven over and over, until they smoothed and drifted naturally on the sea of her memories. By the time Link could play through the entirety of Marin's song the sun had not only set but had given way for her sister to rise.

Link could not recall a day on which she had smiled more for so long, until her mouth ached and yet she could not stop.

They began the walk back up to the village. Link played the song again, and each time Marin gave critiques and ways to improve. At the entrance to Mabe Marin paused to rest in the shade of a palm tree.

 _Link, can you do me a favour?_

Link bobbed her head eagerly as she could without snapping her neck. _Anything at all._

 _Can you help me give it a name, Link?_

Link stared at her. She'd never been apt at giving names to anything, much less songs. Yet the name tumbled easily to her fingertips. The most obvious thing in the world.

 _The Ballad of Wings,_ she signed, one wrist over the other, fingers fluttering.

 _The Ballad of Marin?_ Marin tried to repeat aloud, and Link had to spell out the word. _The Ballad of Wings. It's—thank you, Link. It's perfect._ Link grinned. Marin leaned forward towards her, and then:

A soft, soft wetness on her left cheek.

Marin leaned back, her hand again over her mouth, a faint blush blossoming over the rise of her cheeks. _Now come on. You have a final Instrument to get, don't you?_

 _Marin._ The mark on her cheek burned.

 _Link?_

 _Would you..._ The question. The question that she had not asked for the time she had spent covering the entirety of Koholint with the prints on the soles of her boots. _Would you come with me?_

 _With you?_

Link squeezed her eyes shut, let her hands fly free. _You can say no. I won't be upset, and I won't forget you, never, ever. But if you want to come with me, you can. If it's possible, and I'll make sure it's possible, if you wanted to come with me..._

She could not see Marin's expression and instead made due with the calmness of her words: _To the dungeon?_

 _The dungeon?_ The terrors within. The monsters that could swallow Marin whole. Marin, who had not the protection of heart vessels.

Marin, who could not die in the dream. Marin, who had passed through the first four dungeons on her own wit and triumph, without even training of how to fight.

Marin.

 _Yes. If you wanted to come with me to the dungeon. I don't know what it is, but the voice said something about my ocarina._

 _The voice?_ Marin opened her mouth, closed it again. _The voice...after every Instrument, the voice that tells you where the next one is. But it's always said a location, hasn't it? Or is it different for you?_

 _That's why I don't know where it is._ Link took a moment to sweep the outer shell of the ocarina. _But with your help, we can do it, together. And you can finish what you started._

 _We both can._ Marin reached out her hand. Their fingers intertwined. _Together._

* * *

The turtle keeps for two days. She eats as much of it as she can without upsetting her stomach or making her iller than she already is: she knows from delving to dungeons of the shock of food after starvation. When the stink of rot reaches Link's nose she drinks one last fill and then shoves the corpse overboard. She scrubs the deck with seawater to rid it of the stench.

Sunset finds Link holding Marin in her lap. Her fingers move automatically where her heart might fail. _You were keeping me alive, weren't you? When I fainted. Someone was giving me water to drink. That was you._

Marin nods her head.

 _Did you...where you getting it from the fish? I'm sorry, Marin. I know you said that you didn't want to touch them. Or you found it disgusting or—_

Marin rests her cheek against Link's to still her hands.

 _You saved me._

Link buries her face in the soft white feathers of Marin's back. _Thank you,_ she signs into Marin's side. _Thank you._

It rains the day after. She and Marin collect the water as best they can. She rations more rigorously this time, but the rains grow more frequent. Marin caws out in rhythm. As Link listens, she can make out the Ballad of the Wind Fish and then, sometimes, on some notes, the melody. Whether Marin has somehow tuned her beak to the song or whether her own ear supplies what she knows the Ballad of the Wind Fish to sound like, Link gazes at her companion and friend in awe.

Marin stands with her talons curled around the very edge of the world. She spreads her wings. She caws, and caws, and ever so slowly the caws turn to song, and she sings. She sings. Not the Ballad of the Wind Fish, Link realises, but her own song. The Ballad of Wings. Lying back on the deck under the blanket of approaching night Link closes her eyes to listen. The melody doesn't flow quite perfectly and every few notes strain, but she sings on nonetheless. As becoming a rabbit did not quell the wind stirring in Link's chest, nor has becoming a bird silenced the voice that wakes the stars.

The sun paints the seas gold, and scarlet, and then a deep, deep blue.

At the end of the refrain her squawk shocks Link from her quiet reflection. She lunges forward: has a shark attacked? Another sea turtle? A typhoon? Marin caws madly, a dervish of feather and fowl. She strains her head towards something with her gaze fixed on a single point.

Link follows the line. In the distance, something dark. Cupping her hands around her eyes as though she could fashion herself a pair of binoculars, she stares.

 _What is it?_ she asks, though Marin scarcely pays her attention. Instead, with a flick of her wings, she lifts off of the raft and soars towards the dark.

Link scrambles to her feet. The raft bobs up and down violently from the sudden weight on the edge. She waves her arms; she yells wordlessly; she watches the speck of white drift further until she can no longer see the girl that has been by her side all this while.

The emptiness in her hands is unbearable.

Slowly she sits back down and loops her arms loosely around her knees. The sun gives its final farewell for the day. The moon has not yet risen. Only the constellations shine out against the ink of the night sky.

The constellations. She looks up. In her younger years, she knew little of the stars except for the fixed star by which she learned to track in the darkness. The book of Mudora had given her a taste: alongside the translations of the ancient language that gave a window to the Hyrule of aeons ago, when the Seven Sages had sealed GANON away, the author had described some of the myths of the ancient world and the constellations. As she sailed from Hyrule to the lands of Holodrum and Labrynna, she had watched the constellations whose stories she knew well vanish off the horizon and the constellations whose stories the Oracles would tell her take their place.

Now she lifts a hand to trace out the stars taught to her by the books in the Princess's study. The bright collection of three constellations arranged in a rough circle: the Light Spirits who have served the Golden Goddesses since the inception of the world. The Hero of the Silver Bow a sash of three stars to signal the favour of the Golden Goddesses, who chases away the Boar of Malice in a never-ending hunt. If ever the Hero stops, she has heard, the Boar will devour the world. A cluster of shining stars: the Seven Sages. There, the Sword in the Stone, its tip glinting with the light of Anouki, the fixed star. And nearby, the Reflection of the Sword, arching away from it as though viewed in the surface of a lake. The Loftwing, on the eastern side, the seven stars that made up its wingspan causing Link to turn her eyes back to the horizon.

Though the Loftwing soars on overhead, her own bird does not return.

The Loftwing...

Her gaze snaps back up. The constellations that she has known her entire life, again above her, as they have not been since she set sail from the docks of Mido. Her breath catches. The wind prickles gooseflesh over her skin. She lifts the cap from her head and clutches it over her chest.

A caw, far-off. She strains to see. Closer. Again, and then again, and then slightly further away. Link inhales as deeply as she can, and then she yells. She screams as though GANON had torn her in half.

Marin.

Marin returns, and in her talons she carries a blade of grass.

* * *

Turtle Rock. In Hyrule she had brandished the Lanayru Medallion and the Wisdom of the Serpent of Light had come to her call, the water within the Turtle dragged down to pin its head to the ground. But here the stone turtle sat in silence.

Marin and Link surveyed the perimeter. Perhaps another, higher ledge. Or they would have to figure a way to go around the back. On the path here Link had encountered the witch's—husband?—and had watched Marin scream in surprise at the bat threatening to curse Link. When the Mad Hatter had merely granted her a larger quiver that somehow weighed the same as her previous one, Marin had burst out in such laughter that the mountains had echoed with her mirth.

The fire that had stopped her from advancing previously, she found, would deflect harmlessly from the mirror-like surface of her shield after she had dipped the aegis in the pool of Eagle Tower. Marin had gripped her waist as she set the shield before her and walked centimetre by centimetre. Together they had crossed the passage, hair and clothing remarkably unsinged. Marin had flopped to the ground, holding her stomach in laughter.

When Link had asked her what was so funny Marin had simply gasped for breath. _Burn, b-baby, burn,_ she managed, and wheezed out another laugh. The ridiculousness of her words and how loudly she expressed her joy had brought Link to giggle and then belly-laugh along with her.

While these thoughts occupied her mind she heard Marin gasp. Link glanced at her to spot a self-serving grin on the girl's face. _How did you wake the weathercock?_ Marin inquired.

Link withdrew the ocarina. The song that the Frog had taught her.

 _Wait, Link. Allow me. Can you tell me the notes?_

Without sufficient knowledge of music theory to give the names, Link blew the ocarina as inaudibly as she could. Marin cupped her hand over her ear. After a single course through, Marin put her hands on her hips and faced Turtle Rock.

She sang.

The island stilled.

The Turtle moved.

Link observed its head extend towards Marin. She slid in-between, shield raised, and the beak-like mouth bounced off. Marin took the hint to take shelter behind a rock while Link flipped the boomerang out from its sash on her back. Returning the shield she withrdrew the roc's feather. When the Turtle struck she leaped up and curved the boomerang towards its neck.

Every strike brought a roar from the Turtle's throat. The razor edge of the boomerang connected again and again. Marin yelled out from behind the rock: _Die, you stupid overgrown turtle, just die already!_

As if responding to her whims, or perhaps to a final blow of the boomerang, the Turtle exhausted its heart vessels with that hollow puff of air, like a last breath. To ash and dust.

The second the Turtle fell and the entrance to the dungeon gaped at them in the shadows of its yawning maw, Marin sped to Link's side.

 _Do you think I'll be able to enter?_

Link had no answer but: _Only one way to find out._

They approached hand in hand. Together through thick or thin.

But only Link could pass through the barrier. Marin spread her fingers over the invisible wall that separated them. The tears that gathered at the corners of her eyes reflected the twist of Link's own innards.

 _I guess it's your journey after all. It'd be silly if you could just get a whole party in there, I guess._ She laughed to herself. The choking sound that followed wrenched what little remained of Link's intestines out of her abdomen. _It's your journey and that's that, you know._

 _We'll wake the Wind Fish together._ Link stepped out of the barrier, drew herself up until her nose poked Marin's. _I promise._

That brought a smile, however faint, to grace Marin's lips. _I'll hold you to that. I'll be waiting for you here. After all, you'll need someone to carry the Instrument, won't you?_

Link hugged her. She hugged Link back. With a final glance, Link turned towards Turtle Rock and entered the keep.

Of course the eighth Instrument of the Sirens would also come from her memories. The fire of the Sacred Realm corrupted by GANON's magic. Din's rod to break up the ice underneath the magma that made up most of the dungeon floor. When she picked it up from the velvet-inlaid chest, she could not help but giggle to herself.

 _Burn, baby, burn._

Marin, outside, waiting for her. For _her._ Her voice ringing in Link's ears hastened her voyage through the dungeon. Where before she had paused to puzzle out the map for hours upon hours, now she continued forward as though guided by an invisible yet determined hand. Beasts that she had fought and slain in dungeons before reappeared. A new monster sought to box with her; she would have none of it and simply kept herself behind its head to slash at its body with her blade.

The strange floating stones that exhumed ice from their underside to cool magma to rock responded to the direction in which she pointed her sword. She scribbled down the layouts of the rooms onto the back of her map and traced out the patterns to cover the ground.

She moved on, and on, and on. The key to the lair of the dungeon master weighed down her hand. She slipped it into her pouch and felt its heaviness against her thigh as she walked.

In the heart of the Turtle blazed its physical heart, set aflame as it rose from the magma. Though the Turtle's heart did not speak aloud its words resonated through Link's bones.

 _I will never let you play the Instruments of the Sirens,_ it sang in the voice of an animal cornered. To fight fire with fire Link called upon the Power of Din, and the rod responded in kind.

The heart blazed ever more brightly, redder and redder, until it exploded entirely. The chamber splattered in boiling blood. Link lowered the shield that had kept her body from steaming away.

The outer skin of the Turtle's heart deflated and sank into the magma. As she watched it drown itself she could hear its final pleas.

 _Why did you come here?_ it spat at her. _If it weren't for you, nothing would have to change! You cannot wake the Wind Fish. Remember, you...too...are in...the dream..._

But Link merely slid Din's rod into the opening of her belt, for Marin awaited her, and they would wake the Wind Fish together, whether they were both part of the dream or not. As the heart used up the last of its life-force, it smoked itself into a cloud of ash and dust that swirled and collapsed upon itself. Like all monsters of its sheer power, the vestiges of its heart vessels coalesced into a single container.

The gravity of Link's own heart vessels attracted the spinning container. It rose to the slight left of the centre of her chest. She held it up. The heart within beat once, twice, thrice, and then seeped through her.

The power coursed through her veins. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears, a drum that crashed thunder against her head.

She forced herself to breathe.

Marin waited for her.

She walked forward. Past the heart of the Turtle. To the final Instrument of the Sirens.

The Thunder Drum reverberated in time with her heart. Its melody around her. That voice:

 _THE EGG..._

The Egg.

Though she did not sleep, when Marin's voice burst up from her side and the sun shone upon her eyes, she felt like she had awoken from a dreamless slumber. The Thunder Drum dropped her to the ground for its weight. Marin hefted it up.

 _We have to go to the Egg now, don't we?_

Link inclined her head. _We'll need the other Instruments, too. I can carry the earlier ones, I think. But not these._

 _I'll take them all_ , Marin declared, her tone so authoritative that Link could only agree. _You just have to defend me. And then the Wind Fish'll be awakened._

 _I hope it's that easy._

They brought the Thunder Drum to the Egg first. Prior to returning to Mabe Village to gather the other seven Marin pointed out that the Nightmares could steal them again if they left the Instruments here without protection, yet neither could think of another plan.

 _We'll do it fast,_ Marin decided.

Fast they went.

Marin sprinted with the Instrument held over her head while Link pelted behind her twisting the shield this way and that in the face of any incoming monsters. The Organ of Evening Calm. The Coral Triangle. The Wind Marimba. The Surf Harp. The Sea Lily's Bell. The Conch Horn. The Full Moon Cello.

Together.

Link dropped to her knees in exhaustion as Marin set the Full Moon Cello beside the others. Marin kneeled down beside her. They looked up to the massive speckled Egg that nestled in wait at the very peak of the mountain.

 _How are we to play eight Instruments at once?_ Marin called out to it. The Egg gave no reply.

Link regarded the ocarina in her palm. She caught Marin's gaze, and then the girl's eyes brightened. Marin arranged Instruments of the Sirens in an eight-point circle around them with the Full Moon Cello at the very base of the Egg.

 _May I have this song?_ Marin curtseyed.

Link bowed. _Always._

She clasped her hands before her and sang. Link's fingers danced over the holes of the ocarina. Through _her_ voice and _her_ hands they spoke to the Egg, to the Wind Fish.

 _Wake up._

 _Open your eyes._

 _Wake up._

The Instruments of the Sirens stirred. One by one they awakened. The Ballad of the Wind Fish resonated through the very air, through the stone of the mountain, through the shell of the Egg.

The Egg shuddered from the vibrations. A hair-thin crack appeared down its side. Link glanced at Marin to see the girl glancing back at her, her smile crinkling the corners of her eyes.

It broke.

On the final note the shell splintered. The Instruments of the Sirens passed through every hue of the rainbow and then some, and then faded to an inert silver.

The heart of the Egg had sloughed off. An entrance large enough for Link to enter.

She extended a hand to Marin. The tears had overflowed the girl's eyes to streak shiny wetness down her cheeks, her puffiness of her face betraying her fear.

 _We'll go together, Marin. I promised, didn't I?_

Marin's head swung side to side. The pendulum of time. _What if we can't? What if_ I _can't? What if...what if..._

 _What if Hyrule doesn't exist? What if we're all figments of the Wind Fish's dream? What if nothing we do matters?_ The words that had escaped her earlier descended upon her. _We have only two choices. We can try, and fight, and live, or we can give ourselves in. The only thing that has kept me moving forward in my darkest hours was the certainty that what I did_ mattered. _That if I kept trying, I would make it. Courage isn't about not being afraid, but about doing what you fear_ despite _fearing it. The worst that can happen is that you fail. But if you don't try at all then you've_ already _failed._

 _Courage isn't enough. You can say that because—_ She paused every few words to choke down her sobs. _—because you really_ have _made it through. You have the skills and the training to keep going. I didn't. I failed. I_ failed, _Link._

 _But you went through the first four dungeons yourself. Anyone could have failed. But the day that I fail, the day that I'm wrong that if I just try enough I'll make it, that's the day I_ don't _make it, and I'll die. Until my final breath I'll believe that I have the power to move the entire world if I can summon the courage to try._

 _Link._ The solemnity of her tone gave Link pause. _Look at me._ Her hands settled on Link's cheeks. Her fingers, so gentle, brushed over Link's skin. Her eyes, lovely, dark, and deep, as the sea far off the shore. _What if I'm not human on the other side?_

At this Link's brow furrowed. _What do you mean?_

 _I remember...I remember...wings...and the sea..._ Marin's palms squeezed down on either side of Link's face, her fingers leaving impressions in the skin. _...it doesn't matter._

 _Wait, please tell me._

 _I promise I'll tell you on the other side if I can. Now come on. You're right._ She lifted her hands from Link's cheeks, leaving her face cold. _I have to try._

 _Marin..._

 _Link?_

Link's hand closed into a fist that she held at her side. Her fingers would form the words she needed. They would _have_ to. Before she entered the Egg, before she awakened the Wind Fish and could return, at last, to her home, she would have to ask.

She asked. Eyelids lowered. Hands taking the shape of a bird in flight.

 _Marin, when we wake the Wind Fish, do you want to come with me to Hyrule? I know you want to see the world and I'll come with you if you want. But first I want to...I want to show you my home. It's a beautiful country, full of kind people. You'd like it, I think. So if you want, I'd like you to come with me to Hyrule. Not just to the dungeon, but...to Kakariko. To my house._

Silence. Stillness. She could hear her own heart thumping against her sternum.

Then: _Of course, you big dummy!_ The impact of Marin rushing headlong into her tackled her to the ground. The back of her head thumped against the rock and Marin's weight above her chased the breath from her lungs, but the grin on Marin's face outshone all of Link's pain. _I can't believe that_ that's _what you've been trying to ask me all this time. Link, there's nowhere else I'd rather be. Maybe one day if I get my memories back, I'd want to go to where I was from, just to see._ When Marin talked her breaths warmed Link's nose, her lips so close to Link's that they would touch if Link simply tilted her head up. And Marin's eyes: her universe, her world. _But until then—there's nowhere else I'd rather be, Link, than with you. We'll tour the world one day. I'll hold you to that, too, Link. You're the kindest girl I've ever met, you know that? So don't ever forget me. No matter what happens on the other side._

Link traced the letters onto the back of Marin's neck. _I promise._

Marin climbed off of her and extended a hand. Link reached up to take it, their fingers locked together. In unison they faced the Egg and the darkness ahead.

In unison they stepped up to the Egg.

And in unison, together, they entered, and tried, and fought, and lived, and woke the Wind Fish.

* * *

Though her arms ache she paddles towards shore with a makeshift oar out of a piece of wood. No longer does she ration, but eats and waters herself as she will. The dark spot on the horizon grows nearer. By the time dawn breaks she can make out the coastline of Hyrule: the forests and the mountains and the rolling shores of the land she calls home.

Hyrule.

 _Hyrule._

A ship coming out from Mido catches them. The captain gapes at Link's state, at the raft, at the seagull that she hugs tightly. He has the ship turned about. He inquires about her story and she explains little: of having sailed from Hyrule, of returning after months upon months, of the storm that left her ship in such tatters. She does not mention how long the journey on the raft took, partially as she herself could not count, and partially for not sounding too far-fetched to be believed. Though he offers her food of any kind in the kitchen she takes the meal and runs—falteringly, falling, her legs weak and untrained like a child's again—to the deck, to keep her gaze on Hyrule. If she looks away, if she blinks, even for a second, it will disappear.

When the docks of Mido come into view, the ships whose forms have imprinted in her memory, the homes with their downwards sloping roofs, the sands down into the water, she feels the tears on her face. She does not wait for the ship to dock and neither does Marin. Instead she dives off while the crew shouts at her.

Whether by luck or by the Goddesses' design the tide pushes her to shore. The warm sands scrape her skin. The waters lap her coolly. She laughs, and laughs, and laughs again, until her stomach hurts and the sides of her mouth ache and the sky overhead stretches out in the bluest blue she's ever seen, and the palm trees hanging over the shores and the sprigs that peak out of the sands to spread the leaves that sway gently in the breeze whispering in from the sea. She has stood for hours upon Toronbo Shores, has indulged in the coastlines of the kingdoms across the water, and yet she could recognise the sands of Harbour Town of Mido from anywhere on the Earth.

And—especially with Marin beside her, her beak open in song, not the Ballad of the Wind Fish, but the Ballad of Wings—she cannot fathom a greater paradise.

The ship crew catches up with her. The captain scolds her for her recklessness, for a _young lady like you that was far too dangerous!,_ and yet, with a chuckle, _though if I were away from my home for so long I would have done the same._ He tries to send her off with a friend and she tells him that she has family in Mido. She knocks upon a particular front door. It opens to a chain and a single eye staring out.

 _Hello,_ Link says, with Marin on her shoulder.

The person within the house yelps. The door closes shut—the captain frowns—and then opens again, freed of the chain. In the doorway stands an elderly woman in a brown robe, who rushes out to embrace Link.

The hug knocks the breath from her. The woman looks her over, sharp-eyed and sharper-tongued. She thanks the captain for bringing Link back as though she were speaking of her own unruly daughter. Link rubs the back of her head and ducks her head.

The captain wishes her well. As he leaves, Link exhales in relief, that he had not recognised her as the Hero of Hyrule.

Link bathes. Fresh, clean water, in such quantities that she has forgotten the possibility. She relaxes in the bathtub. Marin perches on the rim—the soap in the water granting Link privacy—and tilts her head to a side until Link mentions the story of how she has come to know the old woman.

She eats supper with the woman and her daughter whose life she saved years ago, a supposedly heroic act that the old woman never lets Link forget. The daughter, evidently studying to be a scribe, inquires of the past six years since she has seen Link last carrying the Water of Life to bring her back from the brink of illness; of Link's bedraggled and nearly-dead appearance; of the seagull perched on Link's shoulder, the seagull whom Link requests to set out a plate for, the seagull who nonetheless sneaks bites of food off of Link's.

They kneel around the table. Link, the daughter across her, the woman to her left, and Marin's plate to her right. In the centre of the table pile dishes Link has not eaten in months and months: carved out pumpkin pie and Hyrulean goat cheese with its mouth-watering scent and cucco rice engoldened by Goron spice and wildberry pudding and a glass of warm goat milk. From her vantage point through the circular window on the far side she can just see the moon reaching its zenith.

Link glances at Marin, in the process of snatching a scrap of cucco leg from Link's plate, and Marin nods. Link starts from the beginning. She speaks long into the night. Her story pauses only when she need eat or drink, for she goes as slowly as possible instead of wolfing down her meals as before. She speaks of leaving Mido; of the long fight yet ahead of her; of the temples where lay hidden the Seven Maidens; but she does not speak of GANON or the Sacred Realm. Instead she turns her attentions to the peace restored.

 _You're amazing, Link!_ The daughter clasps her hands in front of her.

Link merely shakes her head. _Anyone could have done it with the help I received._ And then she goes on: of meeting Her Majesty, Princess Zelda, preparing for her coronation after the death of her father. Of hearing about the kingdoms across the water. Of the Princess of Hyrule asking her to see what can be seen, for Hyrule and those kingdoms have not had contact since GANON's arrival. Of Holodrum, Subrosia, Labrynna. Of the three Oracles. She skips over the monsters and what happened after the Princess's arrival, and instead talks of the people and the creatures and the land. Then, of sailing back, of her homesickness, of choosing to set off by herself for her impatience to return to Hyrule, of the storm, of Koholint, of the Eight Instruments of the Sirens, of the Egg atop the mountain.

Here the daughter ogles her with some incredulity. Expected. Still Link musters on. She checks again with Marin, and again Marin nods, and the pieces drop in one by one.

Her fingers move falteringly. _Marin saved me. She found me on the shore, and when I met her she was a human girl. Everyone who washed up on the island and stayed there for long enough would have their will eroded until they forgot their memories and who they had been before Koholint. Marin...was a seagull before the island took her in. The island transformed those who came into its grasp to give them the ability to wake the Wind Fish._ She hesitates. Marin strokes her hand with her feathered head. _Some remained animals, but Animals that could think, and talk, and hold a sword. And others—and I don't know who picked it or how; maybe it has to do with dreams and motivations—became humans, like Marin. And when I woke the Wind Fish, she became a seagull again, but she knows me and she has all of her memories._ Link curls her left hand into a fist for a second before continuing. _And I'm going to figure out a way to return her to being human. When she does, you should come to listen to her sing. She has one of the most beautiful voices I know, and I've heard the Oracle Nayru herself sing._

Marin dips her head at the praise. Link grins at her and a flush spreads to her cheeks. The daughter beams. The questions continue until early morning, wherein her mother chastises her for keeping Link awake when the poor girl needs sleep. They usher her and Marin into what they call a guest chamber, though Link suspects that the bed of heavenly softness must be either the woman's or the daughter's and insists on taking the floor of the kitchen.

The morning after Link promises to repay them for the hospitality as soon as she comes into rupees again. They tell her not to worry, that the brave swordswoman who saved the daughter's life shall be welcome here forever, and to take some food, some drink, a tunic and boots to replace those lost to the tempestuous waters, enough rupees for the journey with her, to come again to talk of her travels when she has time. Though she accepts the provisions and the change of clothing she shakes her head at the money.

 _Thank you for your kindness. Please, allow me to be kind in turn._

The sunrise becomes a lens to reflect the world through yellow-pink. The skies deepen their azure hue. She passes by a pond at the side of the road and pauses. Not her usual choice of tunic or her belt, but still in green, her favoured colour. She winks at Marin's reflection in the water; when Marin makes an effort to wink back but merely blinks Link laughs loudly enough to topple herself backwards on legs too weak to keep her straight. As Link remembers how to walk, her muscles scarcely able to hold her up, she hears Marin stir on her left shoulder. She looks.

Marin gazes out towards the harbour. Towards the ocean. Towards the horizon where the sea and sky become one.

 _Welcome to Hyrule,_ Link says, her movements slow. The jostle of her shoulder seems to capture Marin's attention, and her companion glances at her, the seas reflected in her dark eyes. _I'll show you the entire world, Marin. Like I promised. First we'll go to Kakariko. Then I'll ask the Princess if she knows anything, and if not, if there's someone I could ask. She knows so much more about the world than I do, and I'm sure there's a way. And then—then—we'll go everywhere together, and you'll be able to sing for the entire world._

Even if Marin has but a beak, Link can see the smile in the glimmer of her irises.

 _I know you can't reply. But Marin, I want to tell you something._ She slows to a stop. Her boots planted against the ground. _Marin._ She trains her gaze on Marin's eyes, lovely, dark, and deep, whether human or bird, whether girl or gull, always Marin. _No matter what else could have happened or what else does in the future, I'm glad I came to Koholint, and I'm glad I met you._ The form that the words take feel like a shape she has not made in months upon months but her fingers slide into them with the effortlessness of confidence, of faith, of the deepest beliefs in the centre of her heart. _I love you, Marin._

Marin touches her beak to Link's cheek. She moves the tip across Link's face so gently that the sharp edge does not hurt. Those motions. Link's eyes widen as she makes out the letters being traced into her skin.

 _D-U-M-M-Y-I-L-O-V-E-Y-O-U-T-O-O._

For a moment Link stands frozen on the spot, her boots nailed down, stuck to the main street of the Harbour Town of Mido. The sun warms the world around her, and the wind from the oceans could carry her forward to the ends of the Earth.

Then she squeezes Marin to her chest. She closes the distance between them as Marin curls her head under Link's chin, spins around, laughs aloud in the freshness of the dawn.

No longer with only her sword and her board at her side.

No longer alone.

No longer adrift.

* * *

adrift. First written: 31 May 2017. Last edited: 27 August 2017.

Author's notes: I've been sitting on this one a while because work shifted to focus on _Delicious in Wilds,_ but this is kept almost entirely intact from the rough draft I wrote in May. You can tell I meant this to be significantly shorter by the strange manner in which I wrote the dialogue, entirely in italics, no quotation marks. Ah well. As with many of my projects, _adrift_ took on a life of its own. _Link's Awakening_ left a massive impact on me and I wanted to do it justice. I'm sure that Marin and Link will find some way to turn her human, but that is a story for another time. While _Delicious in Wilds_ is more grounded in realism, I opted for an 80's fantasy vibe. To that end, I incorporated the mechanics of the game. Link, much like the monsters, uses the magic of heart containers, which function a bit like Horcruxes in the sense that Link, no matter how injured, cannot die until down to the last quarter-heart. In making use of such magic to better fight against GANON during the events of _A Link to the Past,_ Link often struggles with not feeling "entirely human," as though Link had had to sacrifice humanity to protect Hyrule. Getting hearts from monsters and grass is instead shown as obtaining their life-force. You can see why Link would struggle with this: In exchange for effectively being able to shrug off wounds, Link is no longer able to heal naturally but must rely on taking life-force from others, just like monsters. Note that this does not make Link immortal by any stretch of the imagination. When Link is at the end of the rope on the raft, that's Link on the last quarter-heart, in the mortal state of dying before being saved by Marin. If Link were to die, Link would explode into smoke and dust just like the monsters. I don't personally think that this makes Link any less human.

I incorporated the true ending of _Link's Awakening_ by virtue of the whole "if you die, you wake up without your memories, and the island pulls in someone else to undertake the quest to wake the Wind Fish." It's only by not dying that Link managed to succeed.

Anyways, long winded explanation of game mechanics to narrative aside, I hope you enjoyed _adrift_ as much as I enjoyed _Link's Awakening,_ which is my favourite narrative in the entire series. I played until my fingers ached, over and over, to beat the game losing no lives. Just for you, Marin. Just for you. Spread your song to the world.

midna's ass. 27 August 2017.

Beta reader's comments: This is one of my very favourite things that I've ever read. It made me cry and I love it to bits and pieces and I'm so very glad that it exists. Any other comments I could make wouldn't be enough.

Emma. 27 August 2017.


End file.
